Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[welkins2139]

she asked me to loan her money when she bought her first car.

she were asking for my advice when she bought her first car.

she asked for my advice when she was buying for her fist car.
Are they correct ?

If not, why ?

Thank you

[Anuradha Chepur]

The first one is good, the last one sounds okay.

The second one doesn't sound too natural, for the simple reason that the action isn't long enough to use progressive tense. It sounds clumsy when we use progressive to talk about actions of very short duration (like asking advice/loan). 'She asked my advice' is better.

Buying a car can be a prolonged affair (checking out deals, taking a decision, executing it, etc). So it should be acceptable to put it in progressive.

I wouldn't put 'for' in the second part of your third sentence.

[CP]

First sentence: "Lend" is the verb, "loan" the noun, so you should say

"She asked me to lend her money to buy her first car."

Second sentence: She is one person, so the verb is "was"; it is not a continuous thing to ask advice, so:

"She asked for my advice when she bought her first car" or perhaps, "In the process of buying her first car, she kept asking my advice."

Third sentence: The expression is "buy a car" not "buy for a car" so:

When she bought her first car, she asked for my advice.

Yours truly, CP