More language learning advice

April 15, 2025 6:38 AM

I have arrived at the point in my language learning that I am able to express myself fairly clearly in most circumstances, but I don't use some more complicated tenses -- the subjunctive, the conditional -- to do it. I know the rules for using them, but they don't come immediately to mind, so I don't. How can I?

I no longer think things in English, translate them into French and say them out loud, I just think things in French and say them out loud. But because I am less familiar with them, I don't think things in the conditional and the subjunctive -- I think them in the tenses I do know.

This would be fine for normal conversation, and I might gradually work some more complicated tenses into my usage patterns, but I have to pass a test, and the test requires demonstrating taht I can use those tenses in normal conversation, so I need to get there faster than just, you know, whenever.

I need some way to short circuit the part of my brain that automatically just thinks thoughts in the tenses I know and get it to start recognizing where I could use the complicated tenses and using them instead. But how do I do that? What practice activities would you do to get past this hurdle?

My tutors mostly do two things:
-- they ask me questions that should be responded to in the conditional or subjunctive and I answer them in the present or past tense and after I am done, they say 'that was a chance to use the conditional' but that doesn't really help, because I am already finished having those thoughts in the wrong tense
-- they have me do conjugation exercises to get more comfortable with the tenses, which I think is helpful and necessary, but they are never going to catch up with the tenses I use in conversation on a daily basis so I don't think this will ever get my brain to use them in place of the simpler tenses.

posted by jacquilynne to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

Are you watching tv/movies or reading novels in your target language? Real life and the simulacra of real life is where complex tenses happen. Soap operas are a great place to hear the subjunctive and conditional.

I’m fluent in Spanish and taught ESOL for a decade and that’s how I learned & taught
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:15 AM on April 15 [3 favorites]

My first suggestion is to read a lot of fiction. "I know them, but they don't come immediately to mind" often means that you have to see them a LOT more times before they do start coming immediately to mind - and that means seeing them in the real world, and seeing them in more contexts than just textbooks or grammar books. (Agree with toodleydoodley that TV and such can help as well. I like reading because in French, there are so many tenses that are phonologically very similar but easier to keep track of when you see them written down.)

My second suggestion is to write, and give yourself writing prompts that are structured around using the conditional, subjunctive, and any other tenses that give you trouble. Write 400 words about "if I won the lottery" or "if I had the job I wanted to have when I was six years old" or something like that. Write 400 words about "things that I want to happen, but doubt will happen." When you see the conditional or the subjunctive in your reading, write your own sentence that's a variation on that sentence. (Or write two or three, even.)
posted by Jeanne at 7:24 AM on April 15 [5 favorites]

Write a story for yourself where you use the appropriate tenses. Have the teachers check it for grammar errors. Then memorize it. Not because you’ll need to tell that exact story, but because then you’ll get a chance to imprint the correct tenses in your brain. As you said, you haven’t had a chance to practice, you need to create the opportunity for yourself.

(You can also do a few short lines of Q&A like the ones your teachers tried to practice with you on that you memorize in a similar way)
posted by raccoon409 at 7:33 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]

I'm at about the same level in French. I never learned the subjunctive formally so I avoided it in practice for every-day situations. One thing -- or maybe two things -- that helped me a lot recently was a writing exercise focusing only on the 50-ish most frequent verbs. I plugged the list of verbs into an ai/llm and asked it to generate 100 variations of two kinds of sentences using only those verbs.

Sentence type #1 was a sentence in French where you fill in the subjunctive of the verb indicated in English. Ex: Nous voulons que vous ________________ (take) des vacances.

Sentence type #2 was a sentence in english that requires using the subjunctive in french, and you translate the whole sentence. Ex: I want you to finish your homework before watching TV.

Part of the prompt was also to use a variety of subject pronouns (sing./pl. 1st, 2nd, 3rd). I also did this for other constructions where the subjunctive is required. (I'm happy to share the whole PDF if you'd find it useful.)

Once I had the exercises in front of me, the most important thing for me was to have quiet and sustained time to really let the patterns sink in. Not just translating the sentences, but allowing the whole subjunctive model/system to set up shop in my brain. So: read the sentence, understand the construction, get the verb, get the tense, fill in the blank. Then I'd do a round of correcting. Again - looking not just for mistakes, but for patterns of mistakes (e.g. 3rd group -ir verbs). Then go through again from the start.

After that, I do think you have to have conversations where you inexpertly, haltingly, but intentionally, commit to using the subjunctive for most of your half of the convo. It's one thing for your brain to know the rules, another for your brain to coordinate with your mouth on the fly.

The 50 verbs I use are: être, avoir, pouvoir, faire, mettre, dire, devoir, prendre, donner, aller, vouloir, savoir, falloir, voir, demander, trouver, rendre, venir, passer, comprendre, rester, tenir, porter, montrer, continuer, penser, suivre, connaître, croire, commencer, compter, entendre, attendre, remettre, appeler, permettre, occuper, devenir, partir, décider, arriver, servir, sembler, revenir, laisser, recevoir, répondre, vivre, rappeler, présenter, regarder, finir, parler
posted by cocoagirl at 7:42 AM on April 15 [5 favorites]

Your tutors need to do it as obvious, explicit drills with you, where they ask you this style of question over and over again to have you answer in the expected tense, and then they need to mix it up to have you develop an ear for it - particularly because when you are tested, the evaluator is going to ask you a si + imparfait + conditionnel question that you are going to have to recognize and then nail the response to (which is really just repeating the question asked) in order to get a C.

For subjunctive, same thing - they need to do explicit series of questions with you to practice your recognition and employment of these structures, and then start to mix it up.

For the test, I also recommend that you choose a few favourites structures that use the subjunctive and start to include them in your conversation. Don't choose "il faut que..." as one of these because that's a very basic one. My personal favourite is jusqu'à ce que + subjunctive. You can start by using regular -er verbs as your subjunctive conjugation, since they're mostly the same in present subjunctive as in present indicative, but it's best to choose some fancier verbs too, like irregular verbs, even if it's just avoir or être, or a verb ending in -ir that has that nice -isse sound at the end to make it clear you know you're using the subjunctive. For subjunctive in the test setting it's looser than the si + imparfait + conditionnel and the evaluator may or may not ask you a specific question that requires a response in the subjunctive, but in that case it's less essential to nail because you can give yourself more opportunities to use subjunctive otherwise.

These tests are really just performing circus tricks according to the frankly quite ridiculous rubric they've developed to test second language (I'm assuming you're studying for the GOC one), so just practice your circus tricks in very intentional ways and get your tutors to stop "tricking" you because that does not help anyone. You need them to hold hoops for you and tell you that the hoops are there so you can start seeing the hoops on your own. If you miss the hoop, they should have you try the exact question again until you get it right.
posted by urbanlenny at 8:09 AM on April 15 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: To be fair to my tutors, they aren't tricking me -- we both understand what the questions are for, I just suck at playing to the test. If they ask me conditional questions about shit I don't give a crap about, I struggle to come up with anything at all to say -- which would also be true in English. If they ask me conditional questions about shit I do care about, I immediately get lost in conveying the information I care about instead of jumping through the hoop. It's like, yes, I see the hoop, but did you notice that the hoop is teal, and teal is my favourite colour because ... and then five minutes later, I am on the other side of the hoop, but I got there by doing a backflip over the head of the instructor instead of squeezing through the hoop.

I have asked them to stop me right away before I go wandering off into la-la land so I can start again in the conditional or whatever, and we will see how that goes, but I am also hoping to get some other ideas.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:35 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]

I totally get what you're saying. I recently did the tests and didn't get my C the first two times - despite having exemptions in reading and writing and having got a C easily the other two times I took the test - and so much of it was that 1) I forgot what my opinions might be because I honestly did not give a flying fuck about most of the topics and 2) I forgot my circus tricks. My oral level is GOOD too, to the point where the rotating roster of teachers I finally had kept asking me why my French was so good and one asked me whether I'd lived for a while in France, saying that I was her easiest student in a long time because we could just chat like a usual conversation. The test is about the hoops, unfortunately, and the hoops are BORING. One of the teachers told me about a woman who had lived in Belgium for 20 years and spoke fluent, functionally native French who got a B when she took the test because she didn't know she was meant to do circus tricks, not speak French.

The most helpful thing I got my teachers to do was go through each possible test subject (most schools have a packet of like 20 subjects that come up) and literally brainstorm on opinions I might have. I recommend making note sheets for what your opinions could be, keeping it simple but specific, and bore yourself, the teachers, everyone. The test is horrifically boring because work is, at its base, super boring too. Sometimes the grammar gets hard because we just don't know what the heck we even want to say, so the structure of how to say it is beside the point.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:18 AM on April 15 [2 favorites]

My immediate thought is mimicking your tutor. You ask them a question that calls for a conditional answer, and really listen to them answer it. And then they ask you the same question, and you improvise your answer, but consciously answering just like they did. And drill that back and forth for a while. I don’t know if it will work for you, but I think that would work for me.
posted by LizardBreath at 7:57 PM on April 15