Hello Dominik; Both sentences mean the same, but depend of the context they can change : For example: estuvo - the person was practicing for some special reason. estaba - she was was practicing but she quit for example. But, if someone ask you; ¿Que estaba hacien ella ayer? you can use the any sentence. See you, keep with the good work :D Jose

"Durante unos cuantos meses ella estuvo aprendiendo a tocar el contrabajo." This is correct. She´s been learning to play some instrument for a while. And she quit, or she probably went /would go back to lessons sometime. "Durante unos cuantos meses ella estaba aprendiendo a tocar el contrabajo." The error is in the first part of the sentence : "Durante unos meses..." You can say instead "El año pasado ella estaba aprendiendo a tocar el contrabajo"; "Cuando la conocí ella estaba aprendiendo a tocar el contrabajo".

Hi Dominik! Well, they're both correct sentences. And the difference between them is really small. But here it comes: - ESTABA is an IMPERFECTIVE tense, these tenses are used to speak about actions in progress, processes that have a duration in time. - ESTUVO es a PERFECTIVE tense, these tenses are used to speak about actions that are completed, or have no duration in time (just an instant) For example: Ayer comí (Yesterday I ate), vs. Ayer comía (yesterday I was eating). Normally you just want to say that you ate, or what you ate, so you´d use the perfective tense, but if you want to speak about something that happened while you were eating, then you´d say "ayer mientras comía, estaba oyendo la radio). In your example, I think that 90% of the time people would say "ella estuvo aprendiendo" because it´s something that is already done, finished, completed successfully. But, if you wanted to talk about something that happened while she was there, you might say "la conocí cuando ella estaba aprendiendo a tocar el contrabajo"

Hey, as a native Spanish speaker I hope I can answer your question: In spanish we have to variants of the "simple past and past continuous" we have the "preterite" and the "preterite imperfect" Therefore; "estuvo aprendiendo..." is using the preterite past "estar:estuvo continuous: aprendiendo, and "estaba aprendiendo" uses the "preterite imperfect past" estar:estaba continuous: aprendiendo. So what is the difference? Well actually, when we speak on a daily basis we don't see any difference but grammatically, there is a difference, when you use " ella estuvo aprendiendo..." you are talking about an action in the past that finished already at an specific time. when you use " ella estaba aprendiendo...." you are talking about an action in the past that is repeated or habitual and has no specific ending. However both in english would be " she was learning to.." there is no such difference in english. Hope I helped.