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En el colegio, ellos compartían sus secretos.

En el colegio, ellos compartían sus secretos.
In high school, they used to share their secrets.
From Lesson 109:Imperfect of regular -er and -ir verbs (-ía)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about En el colegio, ellos compartían sus secretos.

Doesn't colegio mean "college"?
It is a "false friend"! In Spanish, el colegio usually refers to elementary, middle, or high school. If you want to talk about a college or university, you use la universidad.
Why does the sentence use the imperfect tense (compartían) here instead of the preterite?
The imperfect tense is used here because it describes a habitual or repeated action in the past. Translating it as "used to share" is a big clue! If we used the preterite (compartieron), it would sound like they shared their secrets just once as a single completed event.
How do you form the imperfect ending for a verb like compartir?
To form the imperfect for regular -er and -ir verbs like compartir (to share), you drop the -ir and add the imperfect endings. For ellos, the ending is -ían. Notice that the i always has an accent mark in all imperfect -er and -ir endings!
Why is it sus secretos with an "s" at the end of sus?
In Spanish, possessive words like su (their) must match the noun they describe in singular or plural form. Since secretos is plural, su becomes sus. It doesn't matter how many people are in the ellos group; it only matters that there are multiple secrets!

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