Cheap The Standard Deviants - Parlez-vous Francais? (Learning French - The Basics) (DVD) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Standard Deviants - Parlez-vous Francais? (Learning French - The Basics)

Didn't help
I saw this in the bookstore and bought it, hoping that maybe my French skills could improve. I was taking French 101 in college and needed some help (if being tutored by a female, I'd get no work done). The humor was so distracting and dumb. Ah, Standard Devients, you're breakin my balls. If you search the web for free French lessons, you'll find tons of em. The Standard Deviants breeze through their lessons, leaving a French-Canadian like myself cross-eyed in the dust. Maybe foreign languages aren't my thing, but I watched the DVD twice (with a twitchy eye the second time) and still got a C in the class, and I paid complete attention. I went to class everyday and did the workbook, too. Maybe some good-looking actresses would help this video, and perhaps somebody who knows about proper video lighting/coloring, or maybe better content organization. It goes over the bare-minimum basics, and unless you're five years old and/or can learn a foreign language easily, I'd stick with searching the Internet and/or buying cassette tapes. As they stated at the beginning of the video, it's just a supplement; you should go to class and blah blah blah. You'd be better off watching some French foreign films-- or maybe watch movies that have French audio-tracks with French & English subtitles. Memorize the movie in English, then re-watch it in French. I learned more using that method than by watching 10 people jack around in a plotless video for 90 minutes.

And yes, I'm Canuckian.

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Great for those who know zero french
I strongly reccomend this DVD for those who are just starting to learn French. This DVD covers the very basics that will be needed to understand anything French. It introduces the viewer to understanding that a verb in French (like "go" in english, "aller" in French) is different based on who is doing the action. If I "go", then "go" is written "vais"; if we "go", then it is written "allons" and pronounced differently. I found this element of learning French painful at the start, that instead of learning one word for "go" I had to learn six. But once I became accostumed to it, learning became much easier. You can also expect to learn a little about numbers and colors, and a few verbs and nouns.

This DVD in no way will leave you knowing enough French to go and speak it. This DVD, and part II, leaves the student with enough basic information so that learning will become much easier. For example, I used the TV series "French in Action". At the start of my studies with lessons 1-6, I had a great deal of trouble understanding what was going on. After watching the Standard Deviants DVD it became much easeir.

One more thing about this DVD. It was entertaining and enjoyable to watch. I did not feel like I was working to learn, rather I felt more like I was watching a show and everything was sticking, that I was remembering what they taught. I highly recommend this for the absolute begenner.

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Good Content - Poor delivery
I purchased the DVD to bring with me to learn French while in France (unplanned extended trip). The content is more useful than the audio CD I purchased, however the delivery makes it very difficult to learn. The "humor" noted in other reviews is annoying, but could be overlooked if it were easy to rewind and review - but on a PC, viewing the DVD you cannot rewind in short segments as you can with a remote control/TV DVD setup. There is almost no repetion and the words flash across too quickly to absorb without rewinding. If you have the patience to rewind rewind rewind, there is useful information to be learned.