Learning

Question

Hello, could you please help me with the following sentences?

When I was learning English, I was making a lot of mistakes.

When I was learning English, I made a lot of mistakes.

When I learnt English, I made a lot of mistakes.

When I learnt English, I was making a lot of mistakes.

Which ones are correct? Are there any differences in meaning?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

When I was learning English, I was making a lot of mistakes. <<< Acceptable. Two activities going on in parallel.

When I was learning English, I made a lot of mistakes. <<< Best!

When I learnt English, I made a lot of mistakes. <<< Acceptable.

When I learnt English, I was making a lot of mistakes. <<<Acceptable, but strange to treat 'mistake-making' as a background activity during which the event of learning English occurred.

The -ing part gives the background activity.
The non -ing part gives the foreground event(s) that occurred during the time of the background activity.

..........[ --- learning English --- ].............. (The activity)
.......... ! ! ! ! ! ! .............. (The events)

(Each ! represents a mistake.)

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you very much

Kane159 · Answer

Hi,

When I learnt English, I made a lot of mistakes.

CJ,this sentence makes no sense to me. It suggests that I started making mistakes after I'd learned English.
Is my thinking correct? Thank you!

CalifJim · Answer

kane159It suggests that I started making mistakes after I'd learned English.
Is my thinking correct?

No. Not really. Learning is something that takes a period of time, so just by the meaning of the word "learn", we know that it happened over time. Then we see "I made a lot of mistakes", which also takes place during a period of time, and we realize that the mistakes were made during the same time period when the learning was happening.

The same relationship occurs in this sentence:

When I attended evening French classes, I met a lot of nice people.
(This contains no implication that I attended the classes and then, later, I met a lot of nice people. We know from the sentence that attending classes and meeting nice people both occur during the same period of time. They are not instantaneous events.)

Still, it may be a bit better to use the continuous form in the when-clause to express the same meaning:

When I was attending evening French classes, I met a lot of nice people.
______________

It can be different with different verbs, though, so you are correct to think that successive events can be expressed with the same grammatical structure.

When I arrived at the airport, I noticed a police barricade at one of the terminal buildings.

An arrival occurs at an instant of time, and so does noticing, so in this case we would naturally interpret the two clauses as successive events in time, though the noticing occurs quite soon after the arrival.

CJ

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