French language Q&A Forum

In the sentence, "A few years back, I read a book written by a New Yorker who had lived in Paris for a while, ...", I was wondering if ’pendant un moment’ would be an appropriate translation of 'for a while'.  I found this in Wordreference, used it, and it was marked wrong.

The text to be translated in line 10:

If only she had let them.

The correct answer given is:

Si seulement elle les avaient laissé faire

Why not elle les avait?

The text to be translated in line 11:

-That I can believe, as it’s true that food plays a big part in French culture,

The correct answer is:

Ça, je peux y croire, comme c’est est vrai que la nourriture joue un grand rôle dans la culture française,

Is c’est est vrai correct ?

Why is the imparfait used here and not the passé composé ? The author only wrote this once. 

So "j'aime" means "I love" but J'aime bien" means "I like"?  It would seem more, to me,  that to "aime bien" would be more than just to like but is this just idiomatic?

  Quand j'utilise le mot qui et quand j'utilise le mot que ?