Product Details

• Actors: Standard Deviants School
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Cerebellum Corporation
• DVD Release Date: July 15, 2004
• Run Time: 26 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B00023BL9O
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #71,630 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars fair to middling at best, May 20, 2009

By 

Matthew G. Sherwin (last seen screaming at Amazon customer service) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Standard Deviants School - Advanced Spanish, Program 6 - The Preterite & Perfect Tenses (Classroom Edition) (DVD)

I don't care whether or not Standard Deviants claims this DVD should only be a part of a student's studies in Spanish. They should either do it right or not do it at all! Standard Deviants School - Advanced Spanish, Program 6 - The Preterite & Perfect Tenses (Classroom Edition) just doesn't cut the mustard in my book. We get a thorough review of the simple past tense, the imperfect and the present perfect tense; and at first glance that seems great. And yes, the information they teach is accurate; but how can they or any teaching program squeeze 3 (yes, 3) verb tenses into a single 26 minute video? The answer is, of course, is that nobody can. The program proceeds too quickly; this should have been a much longer DVD video in order not to cheat students of the irregular verb forms that so easily pose problems for Spanish students. Therefore, this video on DVD is perhaps best regarded as an introduction to these 3 verb tenses or a partial review of them. The title doesn't even mention the fact that they teach students the imperfect tense in this video!

We learn (or review) the preterit tense, which is the simple past present tense. Examples of that would be "I walked;" "I ran;" "I ate" and "I bought." This is good; except that they only give you a small sprinkling of the irregular verbs in this tense. They skip over the irregular preterit conjugations of commonly used, important verbs including querer (to want); andar (to walk); poder (which essentially means to be able to do something); saber (to know a fact or to know how to do something); decir (to say or to tell) and others! Not good. This cheats the student and it tells me that they should have left this tense for its own DVD video rather than cramming it into a DVD video with other conjugations. They may claim they are only reviewing the preterit; but this isn't an adequate review nor is it a true educational experience because too much is left out.

In addition, they cover the imperfect tense. Examples of the imperfect are "I was walking;" "I was eating" and "I used to eat..." They do a much better job of teaching this verb tense, although they only teach two of the three irregular verbs in the imperfect tense. While they teach the imperfect conjugations of ser (to be) and ir (to go); they leave out ver (to see). I can't see why they did that; they could have taught this one extra verb with little extra effort.

They also have the misguided but well meaning ambition to teach the present perfect tense--still in the exact same video. Examples of this would be "I have eaten;" "I have walked" and "I have studied." They do this fairly well, actually; and this is perhaps because it's relatively elementary and not too demanding of the student.

Unfortunately, this installment of Spanish instruction from Standard Deviants is just fair to average at best. It serves as a great introduction to these verb tenses or a brief and partial review, nothing more. Students who want to seriously study the Spanish language would do well to take a class that teaches these verb tenses the right way instead of trying to do the impossible and cheating the student as they do here.