I tried taking some pictures of screens to show you some screenshots that aren’t from Ubisoft, but they all came out blurry. Sorry. I’m now on Lesson 31, and the bugs or other problems with My Japanese Coach continue to surface.

There are occasional typos or unclear portions of the lessons. For instance, when discussing Japanese particles the coach says (or rather writes), “The first one I want to cover is と(to), as in ‘go to the store.’ The particle for that in Japanese is に(ni).”

A first time learner will likely be confused between the particles と and に with this explanation. What the coach should have said, had someone proofread the game before finalizing it, is, “The first one I want to cover deals with ‘to,’ as in ‘go to the store.’ The particle for the word to (as in direction) in Japanese is に(ni).”

Another problem is the one-word definitions with no examples. For instance, imi suru was one of my vocabulary words in a recent lesson. The definition given? Mean. That’s it. Mean. In English the word mean has more than a half dozen meanings. Does imi suru mean average, method, unkind, indicate, consequence, excellent, or one of mean’s other meanings? There is no way to tell with just My Japanese Coach. Should they ever do another version, they need to fix this. They should, at least, include an example sentence. They could also include an example sentence using the new vocabulary word in the correct context in the Bridge Builder game (pictured here).

The verb bases discussion is going to go over any beginner’s head the way it is introduced and taught. While the charts with the five bases plus te and ta bases may be correct, a beginner has no idea why they are being taught them or of what use they are.

The map of Japan the user travels through is rather strange. When you hit Lesson 30 you go south from Tokyo to end up in Hokkaido. If you want to go back to Tokyo you go up (north) from Hokkaido to get to Tokyo. That seems a bit different than the Japan I once lived in. 

One last shortcoming I’d like to point out for today is the ordering of the vocabulary introduced. I have read elsewhere that once you hit Lesson 100 you get 10 new, random vocabulary words for each lesson. The arbitrariness of the new vocabulary words taught doesn’t seem to wait until Lesson 100 though. In Lesson 26 there are words like kagayaku, hakaisuru, and unazuku. These words are pretty advanced for Lesson 26, considering most JLPT Level 4 words (the most basic and most used 700+ words in Japanese) have yet to be covered.

Posted on October 25th, 2008 under Japan • Tags: japanese language, my japanese coach. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed