My French Coach
by UBI Soft
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List Price: Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of My French Coach
Customer Review: Great reinforcement
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great reinforcement for my daughter who is taking French. She learns tons of new vocabulary and has fun!Customer Review: okay for additonal tutoring
Summary: 3 Stars
Nice for someone who has no French yet, but pretty boring for someone who already knows a little and just wants some additional training or refresher. Customer Review: Fabulous!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this for my 9th grader who is taking French in high school. I'm one of the few parents who MAKES their child play on his DS 20 minutes a day. AND he has an "A" in French so far! Great game! Their should be a "My French Coach II" for his more advanced classes!!Customer Review: A closer look at those "1000 lessons"
Summary: 3 Stars
I took French for 4 years in high school and wanted to keep up with it, and so bought this game - encouraged by the good reviews it was receiving.
I'm on lesson 66 of the "1000" lessons and come bearing some specifics on the content.
The first 40 lessons each have 10 words you have to "master" - a phrase or two in French using the vocab - and a grammar note or two. After that, the rest of the "1000 lessons" are simply 10 words that you have to "master" - worse is that these group of words have almost absolutely nothing to do with each other. Also, after the 50th lesson, you can't access the "lessons" after that - you can only see the latest "lesson". Basically, it's like vocab flashcards but single-serving only.
Another thing is that the grammar that they do introduce has no seeming logic behind it. Those 40 grammar points don't really amount to anything substantial. I doubt someone completely new to the language would be able to pick up what it meant. Here are the following unsatisfactory things they included for grammar:
* The game throws some verbs at you and tells you to learn how to conjugate them - but never really tells you how to do so (like what is the pattern for verbs ending in -er and -ir).
* When it does break down the conjugation, it only does it for a handful of verbs like the really irregular aller (to go), avoir (to have), and etre (to be).
* The game barely goes over articles and how they adjust and combine depending on gender and number (such as du, de la, des).
* One of the major misses is that the gender of the nouns is not considered unless when used in phrases (a big disadvantage since most of the games emphasize working on the word alone).
* Only the present tense is featured.
* Even though the game "says" to put words together on one's own - one of only a few phrases that they do teach is how to say a particular body part hurts. The game does not teach you how to build meaningful sentences with their "10000" words.
* Basically, this doesn't teach any grammar really (they don't explicitly point out things like how adjectives can come after a noun unlike in English and the vocab includes reflexive verbs and they don't even mention what reflexive verbs are).
But, I don't regret buying this (note: I got it for [...]) because it does have some cool features that made it worth buying:
* Others have noted that the minigames are much better than simple flash cards, and it's really helpful that whenever a keyboard is used that the french pronunciation of the alphabet is used.
* If you're traveling to a French-speaking country and was bringing a DS along anyway, the game has a really handy phrasebook that you can search through.
* The best part of this game is that with the phrases and words, there is an option of hearing the French spoken by someone (I'm assuming) fluent and then, having the chance to record yourself say it and then hear it played back - alone or simultaneously with the French recording.
All in all, the game had great potential, but I don't think they had a real development team arranged that researched how language learning should be approached. And I understand that it's meant to make money and that it probably has done very well, but they really had an opportunity to make this game so attractive that some might think of purchasing a DS for it. Hopefully, they'll release a better one with a cutdown on the elevator music on loop.
Customer Review: Great way to learn French!
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this for my daughter who is taking French in school this year. We both have been playing this. It is a wonderful way to learn a new language. It teaches a lesson using up to 10 words. Then you have several games to play until you master these words. The game doesn't let you go on until these are mastered. Then as you progress, it brings back words from previous lessons at random to make sure you are remembering old words. It's a wonderful supplement to my daughter's class. It is also a great way for me to review my French to help her.