During, while or for? Explain an interruption in English

The British Council's prepositions-of-time lesson distinguishes for with a length of time from during with a noun phrase identifying when something happens. The BBC's while-versus-during lesson explains the grammatical difference between during followed by a noun phrase and while followed by a subject and verb.

For this practice, keep the subject and verb after while. You can say exactly who was doing what instead of leaving the listener to supply it.

Information you want to give	A useful pattern	Original example
The surrounding event	during + noun phrase	It happened during the presentation.
An action happening at that time	while + subject + verb	It happened while Maya was sharing her screen.
The length of a state or action	for + duration	We waited for five minutes.

Avoid "during Maya was presenting." After during, name the event: "during Maya's presentation." If you want to keep Maya was presenting, use while.

You also do not need to force all three patterns into every answer. If someone asks only how long you waited, "Five minutes" may be enough. The full sentences below are for practising the distinction.

Imagine these are the confirmed times in a practice exercise:

Time	Event
10:00	The meeting begins.
10:10	Maya begins her presentation.
10:15	The shared audio stops.
10:20	The shared audio returns.
10:30	Maya finishes presenting.
10:40	The meeting ends.

The meeting lasts forty minutes. Maya's presentation lasts twenty minutes. The interval without shared audio lasts five minutes.

You can report: "The shared audio stopped during the meeting, while Maya was presenting. We had no shared audio for five minutes."

The log does not say why the sound stopped. "While Maya was presenting" places the interruption in time; it does not establish that Maya caused it. If someone asks whether screen sharing caused the problem, a faithful answer is "I don't know. That's when it happened, but the log doesn't give a cause."

Keep that distinction even if you suspect an explanation. This is a language exercise about reporting the supplied facts, not diagnosing a real call.

Suppose your partner asks, "How long were you without sound?" Answering "During the meeting" leaves the duration unclear. It tells them which event contained the problem, but not whether it lasted five minutes or the whole session.

Use the interruption times: "From 10:15 to 10:20, so five minutes."

Now remove the 10:20 entry from the practice card. You know when the audio stopped, but you no longer know when it returned. You can still say that it stopped during Maya's presentation. You cannot keep the five-minute answer simply because you remember it from the first round.

Try: "It stopped at 10:15 while Maya was presenting. I don't have the time it came back."

That answer preserves the information you have and identifies the detail you need. It is better practice than filling every blank with a confident guess.

If you hear yourself say "We waited during five minutes," correct the time expression: "Sorry, we waited for five minutes."

If you say "It stopped while the presentation," complete the clause: "It stopped while Maya was presenting." Alternatively, use the noun phrase with during: "It stopped during the presentation."

Focus on the intended meaning rather than repeating the entire explanation from the beginning. Your listener needs the corrected information, not a long apology for the grammar.

For a longer account with several events, the guide to telling a short story with a timeline gives a separate sequencing exercise. Here, stay with one interruption and the interval around it.

Read the log once, then give your partner a spoken report without showing the table. Ask them to write down the meeting length, the interruption length and what Maya was doing when the audio stopped.

Compare their notes with the log. If they wrote forty minutes for the sound problem, clarify which duration belongs to which event: "The meeting was forty minutes long. The sound problem lasted five minutes."

For a second round, move the audio failure to 10:05 and its return to 10:08. The problem now lasts three minutes and occurs before Maya begins. "During the meeting" still fits, but "while Maya was presenting" no longer matches the facts.

End by asking your partner what remains unknown. The cause is still unspecified. Successfully reporting this exercise means preserving those limits as well as choosing the right time word.