In the third year of Spanish study at Berkeley High, students are meant to learn the present tense of the subjunctive mode. That is a particular verb conjugation that is [often] used as part of a subordinate clause to express wants, wishes desires, emotions, requests, suggestions, advice and pretty much any other situation that has its basis in the mind of the speaker. (The listener responds as he or she will.)
This is tricky, because the subjunctive is no longer in common use in English. It hasn't been for awhile, though you can still hear it implied. (If you were to take a live performance of any of Shakespeare's plays, or to see a rendition of Fiddler on the Roof, for example, you'd definitely catch some subjunctive.) The bottom line is that the concept is highly abstract, that it is basically a mental event and that students have a terrifically difficult time understanding what it is.
We use an acronym called WEIRDO with a variety of sentence frames to teach it. I have basically defined my content this way:
2.0 (Basic) You can conjugate the subjunctive verbs with 80% accuracy. You know what direct and indirect object pronouns are and mean.
3.0 (Proficient) You can also use the subjunctive in the context of commands or with the WEIRDO sentence frames. You can use direct and indirect object pronouns with them appropriately.
4.0 (Advanced) You can also turn all these moving parts into a presentation about a Latin-American country.
The tough part is getting to the end of a project and having a really nice kid who has straight A's in all of his or her other (non-SBG) classes not be able to use the pronouns and getting a lower score for it. I know this student tried really hard. And here, if I'm being honest, I have to say, "No, you didn't really get this. You're going to have to find another way to show this to me." That is the difficult part of scoring assessments.
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