Can you explain my teacher's corrections to me (highlights + words at the bottom)?

The only one I'm able to explain is the first one: starting - stared. You were using past simple so far, stick to it. The "what" could be simply that your teacher wanted it capitalized, but I'm not sure. The rest I have no idea what could be wrong. Edit: The "silently asked", it just hit me. It's a popular phrase to use in literature, but if your teacher pays more attention to correct English grammar and stuff like that then the sentence doesn't make sense. If you're silent - you can't speak. It's a contradiction. "Quietly asked" would've been better.

I don’t think your teacher realizes that your characters are reading body language with the “What?”. Maybe somebody else has an idea on how to make that clear. Maybe drop the quotation marks?

The first tense is incorrect because you used a -ed verb and a -ing verb connected in the same clause. Either you should changed staring to stared, or change leaned to leaning. (Personally, I would change leaned, not staring). I don't see an issue with "when" in the second sentence. "While" sounds wrong. If your mother was doing something that took a long time, such as cleaning the car or talking on the phone, while would be appropriate since both would be happening at the same time. Instead, the mother's action interrupts your action, so "when" is better. The teacher is wrong here. You can definitely silently ask something with a gaze as you have written. My assumption is that the teacher saw "ask" and assumed it was verbal, so silently asking didn't make sense. This is a lack of reading comprehension on the teacher's part, or simply inaccurate. Your wording is perfect here and evokes a specific image, which is fantastic writing. In American English, all quotes use the double quotation marks, even if just a single word. There are lots of stylistic exceptions, especially in modern English where people write online without proper grammar. I would not be confused by your statement, but the double quotes is more accurate in American English. Typically a thought is shown as italics with no quotation marks, but this is more of an assumed unspoken statement. Stylistically, your punctuation conveys more than the standard accurate punctuation, but is still technically incorrect by my understanding. If the quote was embedded inside another quote, then you would use single quotes to differentiate. Example: if talking to a family member about your day, you might quote someone else while talking. So you might say, "Dorothy told me, 'there's no place like home' while clicking her heels." British English may be different or have more stylized options. I know Tolkien used single quotes as the primary quotation marks, but most works I've seen use double quotes primarily.

Some other people explained the corrections, but I’d also like to mention that the first sentence reads like a run-on sentence even though the syntax is grammatically correct. Putting multiple complex ideas into one sentence can make a sentence more awkward to read. I’d split it up into two sentences like this. “I sat in our car, my head leaned against the window. My eyes stared into the green nothingness of France that passed by in a blurry flash.”

1. You should either have "leaning" and "staring" or "leaned" and "stared". 2. I expect your teacher wants "While my thoughts... previous day, I saw my mother..." Not sure why, there's nothing wrong with the way you've written it. 3. You can't silently ask "what", as that strongly implies actually saying the word "what". I disagree with others suggesting this is normal idiomatic usage in English. You can "return a confused gaze", "gaze confusedly", "shoot her a quizzical look", "shrug" etc. You don't need to include an implied "what". 4. They want capitalisation.

1. The main problem is missing the "were", I guess. You (had) sat in the car, your head (had) leaned against the window, then your eyes started staring and were staring onwards. Without "were" it's just an incomplete continuous tense. As of now, it reads as "my head leaned against the window *and* my eyes" but your head didn't lean against your eyes lol. 2. Likely misunderstood by your teacher, because for some reason the teacher considered handing the phone a continuous action. "While my mom was handing me her phone" would sound off to me. 3. Likely misunderstood by your teacher, too. Could've been clearer if you hadn't used the direct quote for your question, e.g. "I silently asked her what happened". But I don't think it's really a mistake either. 4. Direct quotes don't work like this. Even if there's just one word, it's still a separate sentence you're quoting here. Sometimes, when you're building up a sentence with some indirect quotations, you put them in quotes without capitalizing the phrase inside, for example, to emphasize that those words are not yours. But that's not the case in your sentence, so a colon and the capital W are required.

Stared not staring because you are writing in the past tense. “What?” should be capitalized. Unsure about the rest but maybe also tense issues.

Disagree with the other posters on your first sentence, it's actually grammatically fine, albeit easily misread. "my head leaned..." and "my eyes staring..." are both examples of absolute phrases that modify the overall context and don't use a finite verb. They don't have a tense, only containing a subject and an adjective (in this case, a participle), and so aren't required to match. (Other examples of absolute phrases: "my seatbelt buckled tightly around my waist", "my heart heavy", "my stomach nauseous", "my hair whipping in the wind", etc.) The correct interpretation is that your head was previously leaned against seat, and your eyes are currently staring. It's easily confused for two reasons: (1) "to be leaned against" is an awkward construction and less common than "to be leaning against" and (2) because it's so long it's easily confused with a run-on sentence: "I sat in our car \[and\] my head leaned" which then leads to the interpretation that "my eyes staring" has incorrect tense agreement. This is an incorrect parsing of the sentence and I might even call it a [garden-path sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence). However, to make it more clear, I wouldn't change the participle "staring", I would change the participle "leaned" -> "leaning" instead, which better expresses the sense of a current ongoing action and being in the scene. Great writing btw!

It looks to me like your teacher is misunderstanding your intention here. I read "leaned" as a description of the head's position, which makes the sentence correct as written, but I think your teacher (and some other commenters) are reading it as an active verb, in which case it would indeed need to be "leaning" to match tense. You might have to spell it out more what you mean with the silent asking, since your teacher didn't get it, though I agree it's fine. Maybe something like, "Conveying the message with my confused gaze, I silently asked her 'What?'"

Your biggest flaw in that first sentence is that it's technically a run-on because it contains two almost entirely independent clauses joined by and, but it is grammatically correct and reads smoothly because the phrases are related closely. There's a few times in English when tenses or plural/singular doesn't seem to match up, so you should probably diagram your longer sentences (at least in your head) if you want to avoid this. Here's a few ways to write that that aren't run-on. I sat in our car, my head leaned against the windows of the left rear seat. My eyes stared into the green nothingness of France that passed by in a blurry flash. I sat in our car. My head leaned against the windows of the left rear seat and my eyes stared into the green nothingness of France that passed by in a blurry flash. I sat in our car, my head leaned against the windows of the left rear seat; my eyes stared into the green nothingness of France that passed by in a blurry flash. You'll notice in all of these that *stared* is used rather than staring. Stared matches tense better with 'I sat'. *Sat* is simple past; *staring* is continuous past (or past progressive in some schools). You can use them both together, but you must use them correctly. When used together, continuous past verb should indicate the overall situation, and the simple past then interrupts the continuous. For example, "I was riding my bike when I fell." 'Was riding' is continuous. If the fall hadn't happened, I would have kept right on riding. 'Fell is simple; it interrupts the riding. \---------- When/while - You used the correct word. Again, continuous vs. abrupt. If you were constantly thinking and your mother took an hour to very slowly hand you the phone, then you would be thinking while she handed you the phone. "The sun set while the moon rose." "The bank robbers stuffed their bags while the alarm rang." But this wasn't a long drawn out action. Handing someone a phone is quick. So when is appropriate. "When the sun set, the moon was left alone in the sky." "When the alarm rang, the bank robbers fled." \---------- Inner dialogue - While there's no 'correct' way to do this (some style guides suggest one way, others another), it is quite common among authors to use italics to represent thoughts. You can also use thought tags to point out which words are thoughts. But that's not quite what you're doing here. You're trying to explain that you asking 'what' with your body language. I think you just got a little too fancy. Sometimes it's easy to tell what an author means; sometimes it's not. If there's a question, be more explicit. Describe the body language in detail. "I had a confused look on my face. My head tilted and my eyebrows rose as my face asked why she was handing me the phone." (Not that you did those exact things, but you get the idea.)

Your teacher is right to call out "staring." BUT it could be fine IF it matched the tense of "leaned." "I sat in our car, my head leaning against the window... and my eyes staring into the green..." would be just as good as "my head leaned against... my eyes stared into..." In fact, I rather prefer the first construction. "When" is fine. I wouldn't call it out. "silently asked" is fine. Unless she is a third grade teacher, I don't see why your teacher is marking it. The passage has bigger issues. The first sentence is unnecessarily long. This isn't bad, per se, but it should have a purpose. If I'm writing a long sentence like that it's to emphasize how monotonous and long the drive is, and that doesn't work in your sentence because you've chosen words like "passed" and "flash." I might rephrase the last half of that as "... nothingness of France that drifted by in a thoughtless blur." The second sentence is more trouble. "better version of what I said to someone the previous..." Just no. Either give me the details or say "I was lost in thought when my mother...." I actually like, "My thoughts were trying to come up with...." if it were paired with my rephrase above because it makes you passively observing your own thoughts. That's interesting. Finally, while "silently asked" is a good phrase, the fact that your mother is in the front seat makes it unclear how she can see your face and understand that you are silently asking. It would make more sense if you were in the front passenger seat. Okay, overwrought feedback over.

First sentence works if you substitute “and” with a comma.

everyone loves playing editor, but your submission is natural as written and really doesn't require correction.