Your sentence: Over the ensuing years I read as much as I could, trying to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.
One of many variations I can do: Over the the ensuing years I read as much as I could, with ambitions to increase both my knowledge and comprehension of my own language.
There are clearly reasons, rhetorical reasons for using the gerund constructions but it functioning much like the infinitive. (To try, trying both exhibit null tense as a result of the way trying is deployed.
You made the choice to use the constructions, most likely because of the personal nature of the writing assignment.
Your use of trying, is more revealing than using other constructions assumed as more appropriate for the audience being written to.
I think your personal use of trying semantically emphasizes the process in a way I order to obscures. Not only the process but how that process is ongoing and maybe it will never be done. The action is highlighted in a way that seems more appealing to an organization that highlights individuality and personality when considering man applicants.
Even more, your use of the " understanding" is revealing, too. You didn't choose these other forms because they we're not fit to describe what I think you meant. The the process of understanding is just as important as "understanding" or similarly ""to understand" conformed to the sentence parameters.
In my opinion, you're initial choices revealed so much more of how you view the processing and experience of reading to understand language. More importantly, it reveals your comment of the process and experience and intelligently uses aspect in so many interesting ways, semantically.
I think your voice was weakened by the choice to change to a more seemingly elite form. In, both, my opinion and analysis (lol I'm pseudo-amateur at best), this his so much about the experience and transformed the entire message to some generic scholarship essay.
Next time when analyzing verb and verb like constituent (verb phrase), try to looking for makers of the tense aspect and modality, or absence of one or more. This will help you to understand what your utterance and the intended meeting and which reveal most accurately what you are attempting to get across.
Your original statement is great. It's beautiful. Your youth is revealed in away that juxtaposes it to the wisdom you demonstrate in the statement as it was first written.
Also you're mother's English major friend, if I understood your story clearly, was incorrect in her prognosis on the nature of "trying"'s tense comment. a previous commentator was correct in showing how past tense would be if you had actually used the past tense. <PERSON> is known to mark continuos aspect which means the speaker uttering this construction is commenting on the flow of time being continuous or on going. "read as much as I could" is used as topic and you focused it on the experience and process and its relation to time. 873
As I see it, your comment was very appropriate and smart.
This is all opinion but I think prescriptivist concepts and other circumstances (i.e stress, life) really took away from they statement completely. You writing this undeniably took place at a cognitive level which obscured your analysis at the time and implicated your mother or your mother's friend (still not sure if I understood the whole story) as being incorrect when analyzing tense aspect mood and implicated the study of English as not effective, when solely used, in analyzing the different layers that go to work as language is expressed.
I could be wrong and this explanation could be stupid. But I think it's smart that you looked at the sentence again and reconsidered the value as it was initially argued. Also, I think I read instances in which you still weren't confident. I'm an example of someone who's impressed by the sentence, no matter how subjectively I could have, or did, analyze it. You can call into question if what I did qualifies as analysis. Looks like I'm not confident wither lol. But seriously I like the initial statement. You speak and write in English just as well as other speakers of the language. Remember that. Also take my advice on on researching Tense aspect mood and the different ways they function in English. It's fascinating, of time reference and time flow reference can function in ways that are sometimes meant for things that aren't essentially commentary of times nature.
The way I changed your statement is arbitrary and imply something different semantically. Maybe it's more accurate but prob not. Maybe though. Although, you are talking about "your language." 873