NDS My Language Coach - Chinese and Japanese

[puppet_princess]

I don't know how many people know about this but after all the "My ___ Coach" Nintendo DS games for learning Spanish, French, and English they are finally branching out into Asian languages.

My Chinese Coach (Mandarin) was released the other day.  I played around with it a bit yesterday.  Clearly made in mind of the Olympics, but it included writing

Comments

[someidiot]

How much emphasis was put on writing with the Mandarin one? I'm thinking about picking up the Japanese one, but it'd really only be worth the money if there was an emphasis on kanji.

[puppet_princess]

Well, the lesson consisted of...
teaching you words with pronunciation, pinyin, and also the character.
Games and stuff to re enforce the lesson.
There was then a segment where you are shown stroke order and trace the characters, then are made to draw them without a guide.

[someidiot]

*nods* Sounds like it might be worth it, then. Is it made for beginners to the language, or does it start off at a more advanced level? (or are there varying difficulties you can choose?)

Sorry if I'm asking too much XD

[puppet_princess]

Nah it's okay. :)
It's designed to start teaching people who don't know a single word but the first thing the game makes you do is take a placement test so odds are if you have already been studying they will start you somewhere closer to where you are at. I don't know HOW advanced the lessons get though.

The first lesson it started me with, I knew half the words but then it did start introducing words I didn't know pretty quickly. Granted that's not to hard since my Chinese sucks and only consists of common words and phrases people use around me. lol

[thevirginia]

Was there some focus on vocabulary? Or was it strictly reading/writing it?

[puppet_princess]

Well what point is teaching a language if they don't plan on teaching you any words? lol

Like I said I didn't play it that long, but... it started me on lesson 8 so it sort of jumped right into teaching me a handful of words.
Starting with "I" and "You" they expanded on those with "We" and "They" and some other pronouns. Then it introduced a few verbs to explain grammar and combining them with the pronouns to make basic sentences like "You run."

Considering I was on what the game considered a toddler level (I really only skipped the pronunciation sections) the lessons were really simple but they seemed to be well formed and progressive.

[doctorfedora]

Korean? Peh! That'll never sell in the US! Korea's like the Canada of southeast Asia!

(I keed, I keed. I'm sure Korea's a lovely country, but outside of actual Koreans there honestly seems to be an absolutely minimal interest in the country in the US, whereas both Japan and China seem to have a sort of mystique about them)

[puppet_princess]

lol Some forgets the Korean wave.
Though... You would be shocked at how many Korean Americans can't speak Korean... and even have parents who do speak it. >_

[wiped]

well, korea's not in southeast asia at all; it's in north-east asia, commonly referred to as just "east asia." and anyway korean is growing in importance in the US, particularly in business as US-korean economic links become stronger. there are more koreans in the US than japanese, and while there may be minimal interest in korea and korean where you live, in california (where there is a substantial korean population) most colleges throughout the state offer korean classes and many non-koreans are interested in korean language, cuisine, etc.

[puppet_princess]

Hawaii has a huge population too. And the University produces the top rated Korean textbook course written in America. lol Random factoids.

[tricolores]

There's more reasons for me to return to gaming, again. I have a lot of titles on my wish list now!

And if you want something to accompany this game you might want to look at Kanji Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten, which is designed to teach kanji.

[chyzar]

My husband has learned some French with My French Coach, and it seems quite effective for the material it teaches. The main difference I've noticed between that and an actual language class is that in most language classes, you learn basic conversational skills (for example, "Hello, my name is _____. What's your name? How are you?" etc.) and My French Coach was mostly focused on categorical lists of vocabulary words (colors, days of the week, etc.) which seemed like a weird jumping-off point to me.