Italian · Chapter 7 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer
Passato prossimo or imperfetto?
One finishes the story, the other paints the room it happened in. English lets you blur them; Italian does not.
The short version
Imperfetto is the set, passato prossimo the plot
In an Italian story, whatever was going on in the background goes in the imperfetto, and whatever happened goes in the passato prossimo. The interrupted action is imperfetto, the interruption is passato prossimo. Mentre, while, nearly always takes the imperfetto for that reason.
Mentre dormivo, è arrivato mio padre.
Three long years are still passato prossimo
A period with clear edges is a finished event, however long it lasted. Per tre anni puts a box around the time, and anything in a box takes the passato prossimo. The imperfetto is for the middle of something, with no start or end in view.
Ho lavorato lì per tre anni.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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