at/in the moment

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by blacknomi

Hi agian,
I've invited my English teacher to come to this forum. He disagreed and he would like to defend his point.



Firstly, my original sentence was "I was embarrassed in the moment while her father kept calling me BIG hair" . Later on, TDOL mentioned two phrases, one of them was "in a moment" which doesn't fit the context here properly. My teacher also mentioned that the idea of replacing in the moment with in a moment will change the meaning.
For example,
When I saw the two find each other, I was caught up in the moment. I cried with joy.
==> "in the moment" means the experience, it doesn't really mean time. It means the whole experience, all the emotions, etc. Does that make sense? Therefore, he'd like to correct my sentence as "I was embarrassed in the moment......"

You or your teacher is quite correct about the phrase "caught up in the moment". That did not come to mind when I responded. It does mean "time" to me, however. The "caught up in" adds much of the experience/emotions meaning of that phrase. In any case, I still don't think that the original sentence is idiomatic English. I can't believe that a NES would say that.

Secondly, TDOL and Mike suggested me completely delete the whole idea about the moment. I agree with you as it clashes with 'while'. It's better rewrite my whole sentence as in Mike's reply. But my teacher said he just tried to keep as close to the original idea that I wrote.


I was trying to collect advises as many as possible to help build better undestanding of English. I hope it helps me. :wink:

I understand that about "while". :wink: