My Japanese Coach for DS

Friday November 7th, 2008

Gaming, Nintendo, DS, Japanese, Ubisoft

My Japanese Coach proclaims that you can learn Japanese in only 15 minutes per day. With 1000 lessons, 10,000 words, and 1,500 phrases it would probably take you close to 3 years to finish based on one lesson per day.

The software starts the player of with a test, to gauge your competence in the language. The results of the test then determine which lesson you start from. The test itself was fairly easy, and was multiple choice. This means the player is likely to skip lessons where they hadn’t really mastered the content.

Once the test is complete, you start the lessons. The player is provided with a map of Tokyo, which they traverse by mastering the lessons. A lesson is mastered once the student has gained enough mastery point for each word. Mastery points are gained by completing games within the lessons themselves.

The mastery point system is a little lenient on the player. Some games require less skill then others and can be muddled through. Mastering a concept occurs too fast when this happens, and leads the student into more complex lessons.

As part of the lessons, you can use the microphone to record your voice and compare it to the Japanese speaker. Playing back tricky words over and over is quite a good way to get the pronunciation write. You can also speed up the playback. Kind of helpful, as the sound by default seems slower then a Japanese native speaker.

Also the lessons provide chances for the student to use the stylus to write kana. This is quite good, and it seemed to detect my writing MOST of the time. Some characters though (Katakana “RO”) seem to be very stubborn.

Additionally, the software incorrectly gets the student to write hiragana “SA” with 2 strokes, when it should be done in 3. (The 3 stroke version is used when writing by hand, 2 stroke for print).

The games themselves are nothing fancy, with some being fairly useless. The word search and Hit-a-word were particularly un-helpful. The standouts for me were the bridge building and the flash cards.

The reference area is quite good, and something I can see using quite often. Each phrase has voice playback, with the majority of the huge dictionary also having voice.

It also has the hiragana and kanji for each phrase.

Phrases are separated into categories, so they are easy to find. You can also add phrases to your favourite list, with “Do you like bacon?” a mandatory addition to anybodies vocabulary.

The music can get a touch annoying, but the sound of the voices are fairly crisp and easy to understand.

The graphics are basic, but functional. Although the interface could have been thought out better.

The software is quite good, especially for the dictionary/phrase book (Much faster then my Japanese Dictionary). The learning section is slightly fast paced, and has a few errors. A student learning Japanese will find this a good tool.

I don’t think this should be used as a students ONLY learning tool. Its an acceptable supplement, and good for a train ride. For the bulk of learning, its be best to stick with traditional classes and textboxes such as “Japanese for Busy People” and “Minna No Nihongo”.