[Grammar] I used to be shy when I was teenager.

[ambitious-girl]

Is this paragraph correct?

I used to be shy when I was teenager. I felt embarrassed in any situations that I had to interact with acquaintances. In other words, I feel so uncomfortable around adults apart from my family members. After entering university, I was gradually feeling less shy as a result of practicing my social skills.

 

[Raymott]

"... in any situations [STRIKE]that[/STRIKE] in which/where I had to interact with acquaintances."
"After entering university, I [STRIKE]was gradually[/STRIKE] began feeling less shy as a result of practicing my social skills."
"began feeling" or "began to feel". "I gradually became less shy."

The problem is with the combination of tenses. "I was feeling..." is awkward here. The following would work:
"By the time I entered university, I was gradually feeling less shy."
"After entering university, I was gradually feeling less shy until I suffered an acute embarrassment." This is the use of the past continuous for saying that something was happening which was interrupted by another event. I think the lack of this is why your original doesn't sound right.

 

[yi-ing]

Raymott:
I think that your suggestion below contrasted with what the main post mentioned.

"By the time I entered university, I was gradually feeling less shy."

Above mean before she entered the university. However, the main sentence was about when she entered the university she started feeling less shy.

 

[Raymott]

Thanks. Yes, what I meant is that my sentence would work grammatically. I agree that it doesn't mean the same. I was making a sentence that fits with "I was gradually feeling less shy". You'll note that all of my examples above give grammatical sequences of tenses. They weren't supposed to mean the same.

The amended sentence in the original post still has a problem. The use of the continuous tense by itself is not warranted. But "After entering university, I gradually began to feel less shy as a result of practicing my social skills" is a good sentence, and means what the OP wants to say.

 

[emsr2d2]

You could avoid the tense issue by saying something like "By the time I got/went to university, my shyness has started to abate" or "By the time I got/went to university, my shyness problem had started to improve".

 

[Raymott]

Yes, but this version suffers from the same drawback that yi-ing pointed out for one of my examples - namely, that it's not what the OP wants to say.

 

[emsr2d2]

You're right. I misunderstood the issue.

Once I'd been at university for a while, I started to feel less shy.
After a few months at university, my shyness started to abate.

Are those closer to what you're trying to say, ambitious-girl?