When a student

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Nonverbis

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Jun 4, 2021
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Russian
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Russian Federation
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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"?
 
Why have you left out "happiest"?
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?
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1679390025313.png
 
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.
 
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.

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.
 
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