My Screenshot Coaches

by Alisha Karabinus { Jul 28th 2008 at 1:30PM }

We know My Chinese Coach and My Japanese Coach are coming, but we haven't seen much of them ... or anything, really. We didn't need to, though, to get excited about these titles; after all, people have been begging for a Japanese language trainer for a long time, and a Chinese language coach is just neat.

But if you were holding out, just to see what the titles included and whether or not they were set up like Ubisoft's previous language coaches, many of your questions will now be answered. Screenshots have turned up at Amazon, of all places, and while they seem to be pretty early shots -- there are in-game pictures missing -- they do give a good idea of what sort of things are included in the titles.

In other news, they look pretty difficult! As masochistic as we are, we can't wait to try them out.

Gallery: My Japanese Coach

Gallery: My Chinese Coach

[Thanks, Feba!]

Tags: chinese, japanese, language, my-chinese-coach, my-japanese-coach, non-game, training, ubisoft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Mr Khan @ Jul 28th 2008 1:38PM

It seems comprehensive enough, between mastery of speaking (by learning the words in the Latin alphabet), and of reading (by learning the words in Kana and Kanji)

Feba @ Jul 28th 2008 2:02PM

using the latin alphabet is not going to help you to learn how to speak. If anything, it's going to make it harder, by confusing you by how you're used to saying and reading things in English (for example, Tokyo and Karaoke)

If you look at it, the minigames seem to be directly lifted from My French/Spanish Coach, and merely keep romaji because they were too lazy to adapt it properly-- hell, if you look at the spelling game, the keyboard even includes accented letters.

The Kana and Kanji seem to only show up in lessons, dictionary, and such. This could just be bad luck, because one of these clearly DOES show romaji. It could very well be (and I am HOPING it is, because it might not be worth buying if it's so inconsistent and annoying otherwise) that you are able to CHOOSE between kana/kanji and romaji.

There are numerous other problems, though, such as the aforementioned lack of pictures, encoding mistakes; heck, the Chinese version even has "Kana/Kanji" buttons.

if this is not an EXTREMELY early version, it is incredibly broken and lacking any sort of polish. My French Coach has some typos and such, and according to IGN's reviews their grammar towards the end can be somewhat inconsistent, but this would go far beyond that if it were the retail version

Zealot @ Jul 28th 2008 1:50PM

I've never played the French or Spanish coaches so I don't know if they were particularly effective learning tools to begin with, but I'm still worried that the insistence on learning characters is going to take away what could have been more content in the vocabulary/grammar/etc. portions of the game.

Zealot @ Jul 28th 2008 2:12PM

Oh, and this complaint is based on the assumption that the average purchaser of the game will be more interested in learning the verbal aspects of the language. Although I'm no philologist by any means, I assume that what is most fundamentally important when learning a second language is the ability to communicate. Kanji and whatever the Chinese equivalent of Kanji is are for fairly advanced learners and, in my opinion, really don't have a place in a beginner's learning game. I can understand a brief lesson on hiragana and katakana (and, again, whatever the Chinese equivalents of these are, if such an equivalent exists), but more than this is too much too soon.

Feba @ Jul 28th 2008 2:58PM

The My * Coach games are largely about vocabulary, in my experience with them (which I'll admit, isn't that much), and what I've read in reviews. In that sense, it is a very very good thing that they are including the characters they are actually written with, instead of using romanization. You also have to consider that most people who will buy these are going to have much more access to written material than verbal.

Also, the word you're looking for is linguist. Kanji and Hanzi are far from 'advanced'; they are constantly used in writing, and simply using romanization or even hiragana/katakana would leave people at a large disadvantage in terms of reading ability. Most beginner courses I know of that are oriented towards serious language learners start pretty early with Kanji; and from the few Chinese learners I've spoken to, they have to learn large amounts of Hanzi from day one. Obviously, this isn't a replacement for a college-level language course, but limiting people like that would be a horrible shame-- especially given the ability to have people practice writing them on the DS touchscreen.

Again, it looks like it MIGHT give you an option between romanization and native writing, so it's rather pointless to criticize it if it does, but if it doesn't, having people use the language as it is actually used is the far better choice.

Kimiko @ Jul 28th 2008 3:36PM

It depends on your goals for learning the language. If all you're going to do is talk to Japanese speakers face2face, then the writing systems are not so relevant.
If you're going to be reading books or the net or chatting online, learning kana and kanji is almost more important than vocabulary. I mean, you can always look up a word you don't understand, but if you can't even read it, you'll be limited to sources written in romaji, that is, practically zero.

Zealot @ Jul 28th 2008 4:40PM

Damn, I always forget that philologist and linguist have different meanings. It's been years since I've taken a language course.

Anyway, you make a lot of excellent points and clearly have a lot of insight on the subject. I understand that having only verbal knowledge of a language is no true understanding of a language, and that any serious language course encompasses the written aspects of a language. I think where we really diverge on this issue lies in your statement that the DS's unique features are a justification for not excluding character training. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but my concern is that, due to the fact that this is, as you stated, not intended to be a replacement for serious language courses, dividing focus between too many linguistic aspects in a piece of software that promises to be fairly limited in scope and depth will cause all included linguistic aspects to suffer. Because this is a relatively inexpensive game on a handheld console as opposed to an expensive, professional text or piece of PC software, it feels to me that My Japanese/Chinese Coach's only chance to be worthwhile is to do one thing and do it right.

Zealot @ Jul 28th 2008 4:56PM

Oh, and Kimiko:

My opposition to kanji training is definitely limited to this game and not to learning Japanese in general. (My above response to Feba explains my opinion.) If ever I have the chance to seriously learn Japanese (which is growing ever more unlikely considering I'm almost through university), I would certainly want to learn grammar, vocabulary, and writing simultaneously. Understanding of Japanese through kanji is definitely more widely applicable than understanding only of the language--the former opens up access to literature, video games, tourist competency (in conjunction with speaking skills), et cetera. I would suppose that the latter is helpful only for businessmen, and I see my ideal bilingual future self more in my living room playing import games than jetting between Tokyo and New York, eh heh.

Feba @ Jul 28th 2008 8:37PM

Well, the fact that something ISN'T a well-rounded language course isn't a good reason to focus exclusively on the spoken language. I mean, for one thing, the games (because video gaming is still far too inclined towards the 'video' part) are almost entirely visual, with audio being a secondary source of information, so even within the game itself you HAVE to be able to read it. I'd understand your opinion if it were just an audio course, but it simply isn't.

If someone is going to be playing this game, they are going to be spending far more time looking at words than they are going to spend hearing them, at least within the game itself. They are going to be seeing words constantly, and seeing them in the proper writing systems is going to help to reinforce it. Not to mention, since you are going to be seeing them that often, simply, why not?

Zealot @ Jul 28th 2008 9:48PM

I didn't argue that the game should be strictly audio, or even audio-focused. I assume such a method of language-learning is effective only in total immersion situations. Many individuals obviously need to see words spelled out in order to help with pronunciation and sentences formed in writing to begin to perceive grammatical patterns, and I am such an individual, so I would never be against removing the visual aspects of language-learning. I think we're forgetting here that my original argument was not based in some wholesale opposition to Hiragana, Katatkana, or Kanji in the game but based in pessimism toward the developers' ability to balance character training with vocabulary and grammatical training and still create a beneficial product. Because individuals are going to need to have a basis of understanding in a script that's already familiar to them before they can move to anything else, there's the possibility of going over the same medium-sized portion of material once in Romanji and then once in Hiragana/Katakana and then once again in Kanji when a larger portion of material could be covered in one script. Of course, this could all be avoided if the game teaches the three scripts simultaneously, and I would welcome the teaching of multiple scripts if this was the case, but whether this will be the case remains to be seen.

Kimiko @ Jul 28th 2008 1:57PM

Yayness! ^_^

Can't wait to buy the Japanese Coach!

Silverlotus @ Jul 28th 2008 2:02PM

I wish programs that teach Chinese would be clear if it is Mandarin or Cantonese. This one is Mandarin, I believe. If it was Cantonese, I would definitely pick it up, as that is what the majority of my in-laws speak.

moo @ Jul 28th 2008 2:23PM

1) this is mandarin, based on the "ni hao" i'm reading in the english phonetics.
2) the screenshots indicate simplied chinese writing, rather than traditional chinese writing. not that this matters, but i was looking for this to clean up the decrepit state of my chinese. taiwan and hong kong use traditional chinese, while china uses simplified.

Silverlotus @ Jul 28th 2008 4:50PM

Well, there you go. No good for me. My husband's family is mainly from Hong Kong. Thanks for the confirmation.

Alisha Karabinus @ Jul 28th 2008 6:23PM

I guess they assume most people don't realize there's more than one dialect!

Red @ Jul 28th 2008 11:57PM

It's pretty safe to assume that when something offers to teach someone 'Chinese,' they mean Beijing dialect Mandarin. Speaking as an East Asian Studies major, emphasis on China (and miserable at the language), I've very rarely encountered other dialects being lumped under the Chinese label...like, maybe the Taiwan dialect once in a while?

If you're looking to learn Cantonese, I think you'd have better luck searching with Cantonese.

FoliathR @ Jul 28th 2008 2:29PM

It is Mandarin and not Cantonese. But... The screens aren't looking too good, I spotted too many mistakes (mainly repeating of the last character in words)... Hope they will rectify those before release (they better do). Kind of interesting that the screenshots mostly have the word 'seaweed' in Chinese.

The Japanese one looks okay, though. =)

(Anyway for those wondering, I can read both Japanese and Chinese, just interested in what the two softwares offer. Personally I think it's not bad as they even teach uncommon terms.)

Red @ Jul 29th 2008 12:00AM

Bah. Really? I haven't looked yet, but it's not like I'd be able to tell. But that really sucks to hear. I hope it's fixed by the time they're released, I'm looking for something to keep my Mandarin vaguely in-practice 'till I can swing proper classes and I thought this was it.

FoliathR @ Jul 28th 2008 2:30PM

FoliathR @ Jul 28th 2008 3:11PM

Yikes sorry for the double-posting >.< (triple now *kneels down and begs for mercy*)

Alisha Karabinus @ Jul 28th 2008 6:24PM

The only thing I want to stress here is that these look like VERY early screens -- I mean, the photos weren't even in -- but I remember a dev happening by on our examination of My French Coach and saying there wasn't a lot of QC on the games for errors, which is a shame. But that was on MFC and MSC. Maybe for the final version of these, that changed.

Jamar @ Jul 30th 2008 8:56AM

True, but even basic QC should have caught the fact that there are Kana/Kanji switch buttons in the *Chinese* coach game? It looks like they made both out of the same template and just replaced the words.

CPerez @ Jul 28th 2008 6:46PM

I hope the comments about early screens are true... I would not want to see any romaji in the japanese one... or at least, could they put a switch between romaji and hiragana/katakana...?

BlackDS @ Jul 28th 2008 8:28PM

Well the screenshots lowered my expectations quite a bit.

I hope My Japanese Coach has different levels of proficiency for different people.

I have some proficiency in Japanese + some college credits (in Japanese language). I was proficient enough to skip the beginning Japanese course at my university, but lacked the proficiency in Kanji to skip the next course after the beginning course (the university tested me, to allow me to skip to higher level course(s)),

I hope My Japanese Coach will ramp up the difficulty to suit my needs.

Anyway, I'm buying it when it releases in North America.

Peace.

Feba @ Jul 28th 2008 9:27PM

MFC (and presumably MSC) does give you a 'placement' test, which tests a somewhat small amount of vocabulary and gives you a 'place', although I don't know how high it goes. On the plus side, if you already know the lessons, they shouldn't be too annoying to breeze through.