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For one, you can't choose the words you want to learn or practice. Also, the game doesn't always give you all the pronunciations. They also help me keep words in mind by reusing the ones I've learned recently. It doesn't cover as much grammar as a book, but it did have a few things that I didn't learn in class (though I probably would have learned these things later on).
Like rowing a boat. It helps if you know some kanji. I took my book home, and I also bought this game as a for extra learning.I think it works pretty well as a supplement. I got so sick of it throwing the easy and useless word "bonnetto" (bonnet) at me over and over. You can access all the words in the game through a Dictionary, which I find very useful.
What kind of row. They do have a couple of problems, though. Also, most of the games only work on vocabulary and kanji. For example, if you wanted to know if the word "kanzensaishokushugisha" for "vegan" was being used as an adjective or a noun, you could figure out that it was a person from the kanji "mono/sha" at the end.This game comes nowhere near to replacing a class or books.
I took most of my college's first course in Japanese, but I had to leave school 3/4 of the way in. One of the problems here, though, is that the definitions are very brief. For example, the definition of the word "retsu" is "row". Or a row of vegetables. Most of the lessons are clear, though a couple are a little confusing.This game does contain all of the everyday kanji you'll need to know for reading Japanese, which is a nice feature. It is good for teaching you new vocabulary and kanji and helping you practice them. The games are nothing too exciting, but they do help me pace myself when I'm learning.
It's nice that it's portable, because you can pull it out anytime you need to remind yourself of something or just have some time to kill. The ones that do contain grammar are very limited, so if you want to work on certain grammar points, it's best to just go read that lesson again. However, you'll probably want to find a good book kanji website, too ([.].), because sometimes this game gets the stroke order just plain wrong. They do appear with the definitions, and that can help you work out a definition. I'd most recommend it to Japanese students who want to learn extra material.
I like My Japanese Coach. It tells you how to conjugate them but I still have no idea what base to use for which situation.I've come across some program glitches in the Bridge Builder exercises. It has fun learning exercises that help take some of the tedium out of drilling words and sentence structure. The Fading Characters minigame is a good way to practice writing kana.I just wish the program explained verb bases a little better. It askes you to click on word blocks and drag them into the proper order but sometimes the slots that are supposed to receive the word blocks aren't active so it doesn't let you snap the words into place.I would have liked more games that let you practice writing kanji, especially after you've mastered the kana. All in all, I feel this game is a good value for the money.
Also i see a few issues with the stroke order but remember this is a program it's not 100% flawless thats why you should use textbooks on hirgana, katakana, and kanji for learning the correct stroke order. So for those of you who are in this category i suggest you not buy it you should go to japan, you'll benefit more with a real world experience in order to enhance your skills rather than using a computer game. I started studying japanese in college from the beginners levels to the intermediate level. For intermediate level individuals this game should be more of a tool for retaining memory for the things you should already know.
This game is not meant for people who've had 8 years or 6 years of training, know over 500 vocabulary, or is at an advanced level. My Japanese Coach is a great study tool for beginners and intermediate learners. Trust me doing this will ensure you that you actually go practice the writing rather than just using the Ds game. I love that it includes grammar. If you have such experience my question is why buy the game in the first place.
Taking classes, hiring a tutor, joining a japanese club, or if you know some or can find some international japanese students to conversate with then those are all great tools to use as well along with the game. It's the best tool i've ever used, it's worth the money especially if your serious about learning japanese. I've read a great deal of comments about the game, I would like to say that My japanese Coach is simply a study tool/guide it is not meant for people to reach fluency but a simple tool to get beginners oriented with the japanese writing system, speach, and vocab. I gave this game 5 stars because out of all the other programs i've used My Japanese Coach teaches GRAMMAR. but anyway this is a great tool, japanese is a hard language to learn but anyone can learn it with the right tools.
I understand the frustration of all the romaji but the game is encouraging you to learn outside the game, don't expect this game to do all the work for you. a great deal of other programs do not, they simply focus on memorization. Ganbatte.
Anyway's I bought this game because in a short while I'm getting a couple of Japanese DS games off ebay. Hello I'm an autistic 21 year old adult gamer.This game is great. My Japanese Coach is really working well for me I'm learning a lot of Japanese which is really cool and awesome. See I've never taken a language before to study but I love educational learning games like this. What can say I still like learning stuff. I'm already on Lesson 9. Buy this game if you want to learn Japanese.Happy Gaming.
While I, too, noticed a problem with stroke order recognition in the writing portion of the program, I over all found this program to be a nice accompaniment to my Japanese class. Over all I would highly recommend this as a first tool in learning Japanese. I really never play whack- a -mole or romanji word search.
My teacher is real strict on handwriting samples and so I am a little frustrated when the DS game disagrees with my more perfect writing sample. We were able to fly through a couple of lessons because of this little program. I ordered this program at the same time I hired a private tutor to teach me japanese language and calligpahy.
This game did start me on verb tenses before my teacher reached this point and she was pleasantly suprised. Aside from that each lesson is a small and easy step forward, reinforcing lessons I have with my teacher. The games are fun, but like another reviewer I also favor the multiple choice,sentence structure game, memory game, and the writing game.
Also invaluable is the speed that the japanese is spoken on the DS game, and the recording features. I would also recommend taking a Japanese language class at the same time.
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