Languages Center

77 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

I’d Love To Give it A “5″, But……, September 6, 2008

…I have to compromise with “4″.

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NOV. 8, 2009 EDITED TO ADD: Just noted the price drop! Wow. I thought it was a great value at $[...] but its now under $[...]. My recommendation: “Buy, buy!” if you are at all interested in Chinese or in going to China (where this really -could- be helpful, if used properly). And…if you’re an educator teaching Chinese at ANY level, I’d strongly urge you to buy a class set! This is a fantastic deal now. What a learning opportunity!

******I’ve had some Chinese classes in the past so…I think I understand the strengths and weaknesses of “My Chinese Coach” for the variety of people who might try it.

First, the excellent. Spoken Chinese is difficult because of the tones of words. “My Chinese Coach” lets you practice tones and train your ear. A great feature is that you can listen to a word or phrase read in Mandarin, then record yourself saying it, then–if you want to–play both together to see how close you sound. This is a terrific feature, especially practicing tones.

Another good thing is the vocabulary unfolds just like it would in a class–not a lot of words in each lesson, grouped by themes, and with a cute gimmick of advancing you through landmarks in Beijing (Nintendo tried to get it out during the Olympics but just..couldn’t quite do it.)

So…you have good vocabulary, practice with tones and recording yourself if you want, many different games to get through the lessons (you start with 4, but unlock 12–I think–I’ve only got to 5)..

The written Chinese language has characters–no alphabet–and one of the games gives you practice with writing. They’re very picky, but it’s still fun to practice (and people will recognize it if you come close enough–the game is pretty exacting, though, so don’t be discouraged).

The phrasebook and dictionary are great! Even if you feel insecure about pronouncing and using Chinese in conversation, these two features would be a great help to someone traveling in China. Just find what you want to say and let the native Chinese speaker hear it from the DS! It’s a great idea. (You could also use characters to communicate, if their spoken Chinese is something other than Mandarin).

So…why not give the game five stars? The reason, for me, is the lack of pinyin. Usually you learn Chinese with the alphabet (“pinyin”) system first–then gradually learn characters later. This game incorporates written Chinese much too fast, imo, and cuts back on the pinyin (from what I’ve seen so far) much too soon. (There is a game where you type answers in pinyin, but I’m not sure how a beginner would have become good enough to be able to do this).

Many people who just want to learn conversational Chinese NEVER learn characters (real literacy will take…forever for most Americans). So Nintendo’s choice to use characters in the drills–much, much more than pinyin– in my opinion, would be a real problem for anyone who hadnt already studied Chinese a lot.

If they had used pinyin for the vocabulary practices far, far, into the game it would be SO much easier and approachable and helpful. With pinyin, even someone who knew NO Chinese would be able to learn quite a bit from this game.

Without much pinyin, I think it would be very very hard (unless you have a good enough ear to hear the words–use your own pinyin to memorize them–and then use “Flash Cards” to practice with the sounds, just ignoring the characters, for the most part).

It is also important to not freak out when you start being tested with the characters (written or spoken). Because the first game you unlock is “Flash Cards” and that is a much better way to learn the vocabulary than the other games before it. (I don’t know what other games are unlocked later–hopefully, some with more pinyin used).

Pinyin IS used (as well as English) in the phrasebook and dictionary and that (plus the features above) still makes this a great deal in my opinion, for anyone who’d like to use Chinese–or who’s planning to travel to China and wants a “translator” that will be much better than reading from a phrasebook yourself.

This is good for travelers, great for students, and fun for anyone who has interest in spoken and written Chinese (and a little patience with the learning curve, especially at the beginning). At $[...], I think it’s a great bargain.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

Awesome!, September 6, 2008

This is an excellent teaching tool for Chinese. It teaches you the Mandarin dialect (the official language of both China and Taiwan), pinyin (the anglicized pronounciation guide) and the simplified Chinese writing system (used in China).

Each lesson has a few characters and phrases to learn. You can hear the program pronounce each character and phrase, speak into the Nintendo DS to compare your pronounciation to the program, and practice writing. There are also games to play to strengthen the learning process. You can repeat the lessons and games as often as you like.

With Chinese writing, a character is only considered to be written correctly if the strokes are written in the right order and direction (imagine yourself writing a “plus” sign, there are 2 strokes that can come in different directions). So I found the writing part, using the stylus to write the characters, particularly helpful, because I could practice writing the characters.

A huge bonus is the mini-program included that includes travel phrases, dictionary of words known, etc. So if I’m in a restaurant in Beijing, I can choose the dining phrase from the list and show it to the waitor to ask a question.

I’ve tried to learn Chinese from language CDs, but found it hard to use because the CD’s go on their own pace and the pronounciation is very fast. With this program, I can choose to replay something over and over again. With books, I’m not sure if my pronounciation is right. With this program, I can tell easily with the DS’ audio capabilities.

So basically, this is the best language teaching tool I’ve seen for Mandarin (short of moving to China or knowing someone who speaks it fluently.)

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

Would be great if not for the errors, June 17, 2009

I have been studying Chinese for five years and am constantly looking for tools to help me with my studies. Based on the screen shots, I thought that this product would be perfect, however, as I started working through the lessons, I found that, in at least one instance, the tones were wrong, and the character writing games often had incorrect stroke orders and in some cases even the number of strokes was wrong! Unfortunately for me, this ruins the credibility of the software and makes it all but unusable as I don’t know what is right and what is wrong. That is why I gave it just one star.