English Help Online's Blog

Many students say things like, “I stayed in my apartment during three days.” This is wrong. The person should say, “I stayed in my apartment for three days.” So today, I would like to go over the difference between “for” and “during”.

The word “for” is followed by the word “a” or “an” or by a number; and then it is followed by a time noun (year, month, day, hour, minute, etc). However, the word “during” is followed directly by a regular noun. For example:

I’ve been working on this project for six months.

I did training for my job for a week.

The movie lasted for two and a half hours.

I fell asleep during the movie.

I got a sunburn during my vacation.

I didn’t see anyone during the weekend.

So, as you can see, with “during”, the word “the” or a possessive pronoun like “my” or “your” is usually placed between “during” and the regular noun. If we’re talking about public holidays, then we DON’T use “the”. For example:

What are you going to do during Christmas?