I recently discovered a neat little “edutainment” game for studying French or Spanish on the Nintendo DS. “My French Coach” and “My Spanish Coach” by Ubisoft. I got the French version, so I’ll talk about that one here, however, I’m sure the Spanish version is pretty similar. There’s also a version for working on your English called “My Word Coach”.

Pros:

- $20.00 bucks! new and about $10.00 used. If you already own a Nintendo DS, this is a great price tag. It seems its not readily available in brick-and-mortar stores, but can be easily ordered online. I just got a copy from amazon.com within a few days.

- Fun and Addictive. Its an “edutainment” game, so there’s plenty of interactive little games to keep you engaged and interested. In fact, it can be quite addictive. I find myself often having the “Okay, just one more lesson” experience.

- Chock full of vocab. There are 10,000 words and 700 phrases. O_O Quite an impressive list of vocabulary to keep you busy.

- Fully recorded. Each vocab word and phrase is fully and clearly voiced by a pleasant native speaker so you never have to worry how something is supposed to be pronounced.

- Awesome voice recognition feature!! This little feature is almost worth the price alone. Because the DS has a built in mic, you can play the French word, record yourself saying it and play the pre-recorded voice and your own recording at the same time to see how “off” or “on” you are. A truly invaluable feature. Especially for French which is notoriously difficult to pronounce for many.

- User friendly and easy to navigate. Very easy little program to use. I haven’t needed to refer to the manual once.

- Graded lessons. It has 1,000 lessons. The game keeps track of your progress with the words you’ve “mastered”
along with charts and graphs.

- Great reference. Every English and French vocab word and phrase used is listed along with a handy search feature. There’s even a “sketch pad” for jotting down notes with the stylus.

- Touch screen interface. The DS has two full color screens, one output screen on top and a touch pad/output
screen on the bottom. The game uses its DS capacity quite well.

- Portability. The DS is highly portable, light-weight and easy to carry and store. Perfect for studying on-the-
go!

Cons:

- What? No articles with the nouns? For some reason, the makers of the game decided to omit the appropriate masculine, feminine and plural articles that are supposed to accompany the French nouns (of course they’re included in the phrases in the game, just not the single vocab words). The Spanish version is probably the same way. This annoys me. As a native English speaker, I’m often baffled by why the table is feminine, for example, but its just something that I’ve learned to accept. We all know how important it is to learn the article with the noun, why are they not stressing the importance of this with this game? Eh, whatever. >_>

- You’ve got to have a DS. If you don’t already own a Nintendo DS, you’ll have to pony-up about $130.00 for one. This game may not be worth it to you. However, if you do decide to get a DS, I can say that’s its a great little game machine for adults and kids alike. With games like “Brainage”,”Sudoku”, “Phoenix Wright” and “Professor Layton”, there’s plenty of awesome grown-up, edutainment type games to choose from.

- Random glitchiness. There’s the occasional little glitch. Nothing too serious. Certainly not enough to make me flush the game down the toilet in frustration.

- Not as much grammar explanation as I’d like. Its very vocab heavy with some grammar sprinkled through-out. I actually like learning about French grammar, so I would like more, but its not a deal breaker.

Bottom Line:

If you study French or Spanish and have a DS, just get this game. Its fun, inexpensive, well made and has a ton of vocabulary and some useful grammar. I’m quite impressed with Ubisoft’s thoughtfulness when creating this game. Its not perfect, but well worth the price and I don’t think you’ll be sorry. And if you do decide to get a Nintendo DS, you’ll love it. Its a great little machine with lots of wonderful games. And hey, if you hate My French/Spanish Coach, you can just re-sell it on amazon or ebay. Or re-gift it.