These will be my final thoughts, for a while anyway, on My Japanese Coach, the new game for the Nintendo DS.

The lessons (pictured to the left) in My Japanese Coach sort of jump all over the place and aren’t nearly as methodical as lessons you’ll find in a Japanese textbook like Genki. If another company chooses to create a game that teaches Japanese on the DS, a more structured approach should be considered. Perhaps the first 40 lessons should focus on what is needed to pass the JLPT 4 exam. The next 40 could focus on JLPT 3 and so on. In this way a person could theoretically be prepared to sit for JLPT 1 by going through the whole game of 1,000 lessons. If nothing else, it will keep the programmer focused on keeping things simple early on (which isn’t always the case with My Japanese Coach).

The lessons in Japanese are a mixed bag. Some are OK. Others are poorly written, unclear, lack examples to illustrate a concept, or flat out wrong in places. I almost wish I could have been commissioned to write the lessons. 😉 Japanese need not be as confusing as the lessons can make things appear.

Many words are brought forward in non-dictionary form without explanation. This will prove very confusing to new learners of Japanese. For instance “drunk” is presented as yopparatta instead of yopparau for “to get drunk.” “Rude” is said to be shitsureina instead of shitsurei. It is true that a na particle will frequently show up after shitsurei, but that isn’t always the case.

Sometimes kanji are presented before they are learned in the program. Grammar is sometimes taught incorrectly. For instance, hoshii can only be used for oneself. I think My Japanese Coach may hint at that fact, but then in the examples it is used incorrectly. Other people are also sometimes used in examples without a suffix like san or kun, and that isn’t correct either.

The grade levels are very misleading. For instance, in Lesson 48 of My Japanese Coach you enter the 4th Grade, yet you only have learned only 20 kanji. Japanese kids entering 4th Grade actually know over 400 kanji. Even though 20 characters have been introduced, kun and on readings have yet to be distinguished.

In summary, I hope the strong demand for this product will light a fire under DS game developers to create a game like My Japanese Coach without all of the flaws. The task shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish. Some of the existing games for Japanese people (like Tadashii Kanji Kakitorikun Kanken Taisaku or Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan) can be adapted with English translations. The only other thing that would need to be added is the lessons.

Another approach could be to just upgrade the Ubisoft product by having a native Japanese person work on the calligraphy, employ someone who teaches Japanese to re-write the lessons, improve the character recognition software, and replace some of the useless games with games that will improve a person’s Japanese language abilities (including kanji games like those in Tadashii… and Nazotte…). Add a kanji lookup dictionary like Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten and you will be talking about a fantastic product that Ubisoft can sell for over $50 instead of $30. I’d much rather pay $100 for such a product than $30 for My Japanese Coach. How long do you think I will have to wait for such a thing to come to fruition?

In the meantime, I’ll continue to go through the vocabulary in My Japanese Coach. My Japanese Coach is a worthy investment for a beginner (if it doesn’t build too many bad habits like incorrect stroke order and sloppy grammar) at only $30. Intermediate and Advance students of the Japanese language will want to stick with Japanese titles produced by Japanese companies to improve their Japanese at this point.

Posted on October 28th, 2008 under Japan • Tags: japanese language, my japanese coach. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed