rou
Member
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2005
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Chinese
- Home Country
- China
- Current Location
- Hong Kong
My daughter had some homework on the conjunction "while" and while trying to help her I found myself as puzzled if not more. You see, she had to complete sentences where "while" was used to link up a combination of past tense and/or past continuous tense clauses. What her teacher told her was that for a longer lasting action, she'd have to use past continuous tense (I understand this is not necessarily true but I think her teacher was trying to make things simple for them). Now, what her teacher didn't tell them was that when you have two long lasting actions going on at the same time in the past, and the same people are doing both, is this rule still good. For example, my daughter thought the following sentence was fine (and so did her teacher):
Peter was listening to music while he was studying.
I myself found this awkward and perferred something like this:
Peter listened to music while he was studying.
Where the people doing the actions are different, I'd think it's fine to have two past continous tenses clauses. E.g.
Peter was watering the flowers while Mary was walking her dog.
So, can any kind people enlighten us both?
Peter was listening to music while he was studying.
I myself found this awkward and perferred something like this:
Peter listened to music while he was studying.
Where the people doing the actions are different, I'd think it's fine to have two past continous tenses clauses. E.g.
Peter was watering the flowers while Mary was walking her dog.
So, can any kind people enlighten us both?