A favorite student of mine uses at the time when he really wants to say at the moment. Here are some correct models:
- At the moment I’m getting ready to teach my second compact seminar for Management Circle. The last one was in spring. I was learning to work my new laptop at the time.
- I started my teaching career at a private school. We were living in Siegen at the time. I’m not teaching at any schools at the moment.
Notice how “at the time” goes with the continuous form, so it sets the scene for an incident that happened during that period. Create your own personal sentence to remember phrases like this. Or anchor it in your memory like this:
now = a moment = at the moment
then = a long time ago = at the time
