student asking question

What is different between "you definitely seemed to be liking" and "you definitely seemed to like"?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Both of these phrases are similar in meaning and both would be perfectly fine to use in this sentence. I believe he uses "seemed to be liking" in this sentence because he wanted to remind her of her enjoyment of the senior citizen internship program idea. Even though the sentence is in the past tense, he using "liking" (present participle tense) to emphasize her past emotions as though they are current. This can be done with other verbs as well. Ex: She seemed to be enjoying her dinner. Ex: He seemed to be having a difficult time understanding the material.

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