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+--- Thread: My Japanese Coach (/thread-4543.html)
My Japanese Coach - forgottenmemories22 - 2009-12-02
I haven't seen a thread devoted just to this game, only to Kanji DS games in general, so I'm going to make one
I'm really interested in finding out who bought this game and who actually likes and/or uses it. I bought this game AFTER looking at reviews on Amazon and other places such as You Tube and various blogs, so I knew things such as some kana and kanji may have incorrect stroke order, romaji is strongly emphasized in games and learning until lesson 30 when it switches to kana, etc. So why did I still purchase this game? Well, I looked at the monetary value, approx $30 US, and decided that for the over 1,000 lessons and 10,000 words it claimed to teach, it was very worth it. Also, at the time I was not doing RTK and did not have enough time or money to devote to proper resources and time to study them, so I figured "My Japanese Coach" if anything would be something physically light that I could take around campus [I am a college student] and do in five or 10 minutes before class. That way, even if it wasn't the best thing I could be doing to learn Japanese, at least I'd get some practice.
What did I discover? Well, I thought it would be alot more helpful to learn kanji than it actually was. I found that what little kanji they had around lesson 50/60 was not presented well in the "planned" out lessons. They only gave you a certain amount of strokes in order to trace the character. This means that you could not practice again off to the side on the same screen even though a whole bunch of white space was just screaming "Draw some kanji on me baby!" LOL. Also, you wanted to do reviewing the kanji more than once to solidify it in your memory, then you had to navigate through countless screens to do so again. This would not be a big problem if the games that involved kanji did not want you to recall them and write them in correct stroke order. I may sound like I did not like the kanji-specific mini games, however I just mean to say that if they taught the kanji better in the lessons then I would not have a problem with the kanji specific mini games. Although, the last thing I can say about the kanji in the mini-games in general is that sometimes they appear very small and are hard to tell apart because of it. Although I really can't complain all too much because the disappointment of not learning kanji from 'My Japanese Coach' made me investigate other methods of learning kanji which is how I stumbled upon RTK
I kind of went on a rant about kanji in the game, however what I really wanted to talk about was how I make 'My Japanese Coach' work for me. I can't really remember what lesson I'm currently on, but I think it's 124 or 125. Well, coming from a person who had already learned alot of basic vocabulary before playing this game, I can say that if you stick it out until lesson 100, things get alot better. Basically the lessons go from structured to something called 'Open Plan' and the only bad thing about that is you cannot go back to each lesson individually. From there on out, if you want to review the words you learned again you either have to use their built in Dictionary and look for 'starred' words [meaning words you've mastered ], or just play mini games using only 'Mastered Words'. Each lesson contains 10 words, these words are pretty random and are only shown in kana, not with kanji. This is kind of annoying because after "learning" the words, I'll only be able to recognize them when I hear them. Although, I really think doing it this way is better than nothing and when I do decide to look up the words in a dictionary such as Jim Breen's, I'll see the kanji for them. Also, about every five lessons, there will be 10 kanji that you have to memorize. Although I've said before I do not appreciate their method for learning kanji, I have to play the mini games for them so that I can move on to new vocabulary, so how do I get around this? Well, it's actually funny that its basically an electronic version of RTK. If you only play the Multiple Choice mini game for kanji, it gives you an English word and then you choose from A, B, C, or D which are different kanji. So basically you are just associating an English word with a kanji. Basically, RTK! And there fore, I can get around having to "write" the kanji without wasting time and messing up my current RTK methods.
So what I plan on doing is trying to make it to Lesson 1,000 in "My Japanese Coach", well the game claims there is actually over 1,000 lessons and I'm only on 125, so I have along way to go. I also am currently doing RTK and I'm on frame 63. This way with both "My Japanese Coach" and RTK, I'm getting vocabulary and kanji. I also have other books I use to learn grammar, etc.
So I'd really like to hear people's opinions on "My Japanese Coach", Do you use it, do you like it? Are you making it work for you, even if it's not the most complete resource for learning Japanese?
My Japanese Coach - Daichi - 2009-12-02
To be completely honest, "My Japanese Coach" actually was my gateway drug to RTK. The game was given to me as a present. Without it, I wouldn't of had the motivation to search for some better method to improve my Japanese. Which led me to find AJATT and of course this site.
Regarding the game itself, it's just not properly structured as a good learning tool, since it offers no way to decide what you want to review. And it's got no SRS basis. The mini games don't seem well thought out for Japanese. These mini-games probably work a lot better for Latin based languages. As I've heard that the other Coach games tend to be better.
Honestly, I never made it too far. I got frustrated with it rather fast. It was a little too basic for me to begin with. And it would of taken too much wasted effort to get further. This was long before they openly published the Lesson skip cheat. Thankfully I've since found better ways to spend my time since.
I initially gave some thought in mining some of the vocab from this game, but I now believe that I'm better off looking elsewhere to learn new words.
My Japanese Coach - wccrawford - 2009-12-02
It could be far better, but it has definitely been worth the $30.
My Japanese Coach - TheVinster - 2009-12-02
I bought it but only played through a couple lessons. To me it felt like a gimmick, and I was never motivated. Of course we all have different styles of learning, but I would avoid it and buy something else instead.
My Japanese Coach - mentat_kgs - 2009-12-02
Shallow, uninteresting.