How I got here
It started in a café, with a B1 student. She spoke fluently, but everything she said lived on the same ground: facts. It wasn't that she didn't know the subjunctive — she was dodging it. Like nearly all my students from B1 up: they speak very well, inside their comfort zone.
For months I tried everything to get them out of it. Lists, categories, rational associations. It all worked in the exercise and collapsed in conversation.
Until, after months of digging and research, I stopped looking at textbooks and started testing native speakers instead.
They got it right every time. Not one of them could explain why. But every single one was doing exactly the same thing.
Underneath all of their answers there was one single idea.
So simple it's infuriating that nobody told you sooner.
It's the first thing you'll see on day one.