时(shí)间(jiān) is the human’s cognition towards time, which can be expressed in the form of second, day, week, month, year and century. 时(shí)候(hou) means ‘moment’, which is used as the specific time. For example,
写文章需要很长的时间
Xiě wénzhāng xūyào hěn cháng de shíjiān
Write essay need evaluative marker long time
It will take a long time to write an essay
写文章的时候，我不想被打扰
Xiě wénzhāng de shíhou wǒ bù xiǎng bèi dǎrǎo
Write essay moment I don’t want bother
I don’t want to be bothered when writing an essay.
引自：彭小川，李守纪，王红. 对外汉语教学语法释疑201例. 北京：商务印书馆，2004.
