Abstract:

This article explores the issue of teaching Spanish as a foreign language for Russian speaking audience, and, particularly, one of the most complicated topics at the advanced level of studies, i.e. subjunctive mood. The purpose of the present article is to describe fundamental differences of the Subjunctive mood in Russian and Spanish, which potentially could form the difficulties in the process of teaching this topic to the Russian speaking audience at the level of perception, comprehension and usage. It is sufficient to note that the idea of subjunctive mood in Russian is based on the one and only existing form of expression of unreal action, whereas in the modern Spanish such action can be expressed through four different forms of Subjunctive mood and two forms of conditional mood, apart from two forms of Subjunctive which are not in active usage anymore. Basing on the got conclusions the present article describes the methodology of teaching the topic of “Subjunctive mood”, which was successfully tested by the authors of the present article on the audience of university students during many years and includes the best practices of teaching Spanish as a foreign language of Russian and Spanish linguistic schools. The use of the present methodology enables students to get a clear idea about limits, sphere and mode of usage of the subjunctive mood and use it correctly in oral and written speech on daily basis.

Keywords:

Subjunctive Mood, Spanish as a second language, teaching Spanish, teaching methodology.