Hi Pelin, I'll try answering based on what I thought when I first read the two sentences. I'm from the US so it might be different depending on what variety of English anyone speaks. The first sentence to me sounds like you are trying to figure out what is actually happening. For example, maybe you see a crowd of people and you want to know why everyone is gathered. What are they looking at? What happened? That kind of thing. The second sentence, seems like you already know what is happening/happened and you are trying to make sense of it or classify it as something else. This is more difficult to explain... But i have a real example from my life. Once I worked for a company that announced layoffs due to a bad economy. One of my coworkers actually told me: "try to see the situation for what it is, it's an opportunity to actually look for a job you like."

When you are writing out fractions with words, you should always use the hyphen. So, "2. The moon is about one-third as large in diameter as the earth. " is the correct sentence. Also, "three-fourths of the surface" with the hyphen is correct, the one without the hyphen is not correct because "three-fourths" is a fraction and should always have a hyphen when written out with words. https://www.proofreadnow.com/blog/bid/88251/Hyphens-Fractions-Numbers This is a different rule from the one about compound adjectives like "the three-hour movie" . In "three hours' movie" I believe this apostrophe is a temporal expression which you can read more about here: https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/apostrophes_in_time_(temporal)_expressions.htm

Your understanding of "academic" and "professional" sounds correct to me. I'm not really sure about your research. If it wasn't for school or academic then you can probably classify it as "personal", but I would contact someone from the organization to which you are applying to get more information. It sounds like "personal" is being used to describe a "creative work" you did that was not for school or for a job. Maybe something like a design you made in your own free time.

Hi Helen, I think it depends on which "change" you mean. If you mean "change" as in money then it is always (to my knowledge) "change". For ex. "The change is on the table" ; "Here is your change". If you mean a "change" as in the act of becoming different, then you can see both the singular and plural version of this sometimes. For example: "We experience changes in the weather with each season."

Situation

Imagine that I went to the market. I bought many vegetables, like cabbages, spinaches, peas, celeries, artichokes, escaroles, lettuces, corns, broccolis and others. When I was putting them into packages suddenly I saw ants inside the vegetables. I thought these vegetables were spoiled. Beside the cashbox was a sign with rules offor buyers and I read them. I had the right to get money back. I came up to the cashbox  and explained this situation. The cashier didn't give my money back.