When a student

Rewrite using the words in bold.

when I was happiest .... university.

I wrote: when a student at university.

Source: Workbook to Upstream Proficiency by Virginia Evans and Jenny Dooley.

Could you tell me whether such wording is correct or not? I remembered about "when I was" but I thought my variant is a bit more sophisticated.

Your phrase is not correct. You need "I was".
Why have you left out "happiest"?

tedmc said:

Why have you left out "happiest"?

Click to expand...

Because it is already in the textbook, I inserted something after their initial phrase.


What about these examples? Maybe my phrase is more or less correct?

I was happiest when a student at university is fine,

Could you tell me what figure of speech it is? Is it a case of ellipsis?

Would you mind linking a screenshot of the exercise? I'm not sure I fully understand the exercise.

Okay, thanks. So I believe the answer they want is I was happiest when I was at university. Is that the answer in the key? That doesn't sound very proficient.

Unlike 5jj, I don't like your ellipted version. It sounds questionable to me. I wouldn't have a problem if you ellipted when I was, but to ellipt only I was and keep when sounds uncomfortable to me.

I wonder what other members think about this.

I agree with 5jj that "I was happiest when a student at university" is acceptable.

It's a construction I might use myself, although I'd probably drop 'a student' since I've never been anything other than a student when at a university. I guess if you've worked at one in some capacity, then you might need to specify the role; otherwise the 'student' bit seems obvious.

Also, I'd probably say 'in college' instead of 'at university" as an AmE speaker, but that's unrelated to the question at hand.

jutfrank said:

I don't like your ellipted version. It sounds questionable to me. I wouldn't have a problem if you ellipted when I was, but to ellipt only I was and keep when sounds uncomfortable to me.

Click to expand...

Reading this back, I see I didn't say what I meant. What I meant was:

I was happiest when at university. [fine]
I was happiest when a student at university. [questionable]

It's interesting to hear that other native speakers deem the latter sentence acceptable.