bit-tech Shopping: UbiSoft My Japanese Coach

Rating: 8

Time with product: 2 Weeks

Strengths: There are more than 1000 lessons; well structured, easy to follow. Mini games made the learning fun.

Weaknesses: Lots of romaji and not many kanji. Maybe later lessons will see more kanji being used? Some wrong stroke orders in writing should not have been there.

Summary: This is a fun tool to learn basic Japanese. It will help you learn plenty of words and phrases. At 10 vocabulary per lesson, it is not difficult to pick up. I particularly like the feature that allows you to record your voice and compare it to the native speaker. This is very useful in learning the correct pronunciation. I had taken Japanese classes in college years ago and this game really helps refresh what I learned. I don't think this game alone will let you master the language. It is more like a studying tool or a supplement. Regardless, it is a fun way to learn some basic Japanese. My only concern is that there are some obvious errors in the stroke sequence when writing some hiragana and katakana characters. This kind of error is annoying and should not have been there in the first place for a language learning tool. I hope UbiSoft will fix this quickly.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 6 Days

Strengths: My Japanese Coach has over 1000 lessons.

Weaknesses: I have not found any.

Summary: My Japanese Coach has over 1000 lessons. It starts off with 100 scripted lessons which teach you proper grammar structure and basic sentence structure. The beginning is a little slow since there are only three games to play but they are entertaining and reinforce the lessons quite well. You start off with a list of words that you can see the romaji translation for and hear the correct pronunciation. Then you play little mini games that include the words you just learned and past words you have already mastered. Overall My Japanese Coach is a very enjoyable learning game. It keeps you engaged and the mastery point system gives you a good sense of how well you know the words.