Breakdown of Él terminó el colegio, pero luego recibía notas terribles en la universidad.
él
he
pero
but
en
in / on / at
recibir
to receive
terminar
to finish / to end
luego
later
el colegio
the school
la universidad
university
terrible
terrible / awful
la nota
grade
Questions & Answers about Él terminó el colegio, pero luego recibía notas terribles en la universidad.
Why does this sentence use terminó for finishing high school but recibía for getting bad grades?
This sentence is a great example of how Spanish uses two different past tenses together. terminó is in the preterite tense because finishing high school is viewed as a single, completed event. recibía is the imperfect tense of the -ir verb recibir. It is used here because getting terrible grades was an ongoing or repeated situation (he used to receive them) over a period of time at the university.
Wait, doesn't colegio mean college?
That is a very common mix-up! colegio is a false friend — a word that looks like English but means something else. In Spanish, colegio usually refers to a high school or elementary school. If you want to talk about college or university, you use universidad, just like at the end of this sentence.
How do we form the imperfect tense for an -ir verb like recibir?
For regular -er and -ir verbs, you drop the ending and add -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, or -ían. Since we are talking about él (he), we use the -ía ending to get recibía. Notice that every single one of these endings has a written accent on the i!
Does notas mean notes or grades here?
In an educational context, notas means grades or marks. If you want to talk about taking written notes in class, you would use apuntes. So recibía notas terribles means he used to get terrible grades.
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