Episode 24 - Master Correctly Using During and For in your English Sentences

Today was a grammar class with the focus on time phrases using 'during' and 'for'. 'During' is used to say when something happens; 'for' is used to say how long it lasts. We can use 'in' instead of 'during' most of the time, but we can't say 'for' instead of 'during' because the grammar and use is different. We will eat a lot during the Christmas holiday. = We will eat a lot in the Christmas holiday. The Christmas holiday lasts for two weeks. - focuses on how long. She always falls asleep during movies. - At some point when she is watching a movie she will usually fall asleep. She fell asleep for the movie. - We would rather use during, this doesn't really work. She fell asleep for the whole movie. -We are emphasising the 'whole', meaning from start to finish, rather than just some of the time the movie was playing. I've had no energy during the last few weeks. -Although grammatically this is Ok because we mean over the last few weeks, we wouldn't usually say it because of the time phrase, we would much rather say: I've had no energy for the last few weeks. However, if we have a particular thing 'during' works: I had no energy during my holiday. We've had no electricity for 2 hours! -We're angry about this, and we have the time frame. The electricity kept going off all day. -We're still angry. 'Kept going off' tells us this was continuous, on and off, on and off, all day long. ('all day' and 'all day long' are also the same) The electricity kept going off during the day. -We're not as angry, just stating a fact. We know it happened ore than once but it doesn't seem so bad, maybe it only went off a couple of times. Additional Vocabulary 'Drop me an email'. - Very common phrase that means 'send me' an email. We can also use it for messages or message apps: 'Drop me a WhatsApp'. If I've 'confused the life out of you' - Idiom - added to sentences where we want to emphasise how confusing something we've said is. You can also use it to tell someone you're confused about something: 'that confused the life out of me.' 'It's a little tricky to get your head around' - Idiom - I use 'tricky' a lot to mean a little complicated or difficult to understand. 'To get your head around' is used when we might have trouble understanding something. It doesn't have to be a lesson like this. It could be an idea or a concept or a way of living that we just don't understand. We can say 'I can't get my head around it.' Nuance - the small, sometimes very small, differences between things. I often use this to explain the small differences in meaning between two words or phrases.