I’ve been using My French Coach for just over a week. In that time, I’ve progressed from “Pre-Schooler” to “Third Grader”.

Overall, I’m still enjoying this and I do believe that I’m learning. However, I have a few complaints about things that begin to stand out after using it for a while.

1) When displaying French nouns, we are not given the gender (le or la). This is important, and I cannot understand why it was left out. I hope they will start including it in future lessons, but I doubt it.

2) It is too easy to progress to the next level; just a few exposures to a new word in a few games and they claim that you have mastered it and can move on. However, I do not feel like I have actually mastered the words in each lesson unless I’ve already seen them before. I’m wondering how helpful this learning tool will be once/if I get to lessons where I don’t know most of the words already… that has just started to happen.

3) So far, the lessons and games are weak in teaching grammar and sentence construction. I want to know more than just a few nouns and verbs, I want to construct sentences.

Up to the current level, I feel like this is a good motivational tool to keep me studying French. It’s like a very entertaining and interactive set of flash cards. I’d never find it interesting to sit down and study a set of flash cards day after day, but My French Coach is effectively helping me to do that. I am curious about how the game works as you advance.

I’ve been using My French Coach for two days and I’m already up to the rank of “First Grader”. I think I’m progressing so fast because I wasn’t ranked correctly in the first place. I also think it’s too easy to progress. For example, I might be exposed to a word ten times in various games, and then I’m assumed to have “mastered” the word. In fact, that’s not really the case. I may be able to pick the correct translation in a multiple choice quiz, but if I were asked to translate the word without any hints, I might be unable to. And if I did get it right, I might still get the spelling incorrect.

Despite that, I’ve spent at least 4 hours over the last couple of days playing with the gadget. So far as motivation goes, it seems to be working.

I got a Nintendo DS for Christmas, along with Ubisoft’s My French Coach.

When initializing, the game tests you to start you at the correct level. I started at level 10, which sounds great! But they give that level a rank of “Pre-Schooler”. Oops!

I didn’t read the manual before starting, but jumped right in. I give the game kudos for how easy it was to start.

The software consists of learning modules and game modules. Mostly, I’ve been playing four games: word search (hunt for French words in a square matrix of letters); a whack-a-mole style game where you bop the critters holding the French word that matches the English word you are hunting; a multiple choice quiz game where you’re given an English word and a set of four French words to match it with; and a similar word match game called “Flash Cards” which isn’t really flash cards. In the Flash Cards game, you are given a French word, sometimes spoken and sometimes written, and then given a choice of four English words with which to match it. So the multiple choice game and the flash card game are similar, but differ in which direction you are translating to/from.

Will I become fluent in French by playing this game? I do not think so. However, I have found that my motivation in studying French is sporadic at best. In contrast, I know that I can obsessively play video games for hours. So much so, that I have stayed away from video games for many years, since I tend to be unable to play them in moderation. And indeed, in the last 24 hours of possessing this game, I’ve played it for about two hours.

My hope is that this will be a good motivational tool, to drive me to pick up my French text books more often. I think the interactivity will help in keeping me interested. Time will tell.

I have to be wary of the temptation to buy a “real” video game module for my new Nintendo DS. One of my nieces was playing MarioKart on her Nintendo, and I asked her to show it to me. It was quite a lot of fun! I can see myself ejecting “My French Coach” in favor of a mindless video game and never coming back to it. Maybe I could play just for a little while…