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Only seems good at first, but would take much longer to learn anything.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 25 / 40
Date: January 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

At first, I thought this game was great. After playing it almost every day for about 5 weeks, I have a very different view.

Pros-

Most of the games are actually fun at first. You'll probably learn some words and their spelling. Easy to pick up.

Now for the much longer list of cons-

This game does a terrible job of gauging your current level. It asks you far too few words, almost all of which are highly advanced, and placed both my friend and I FAR lower than it should have. There's nothing you can do about that. I'm 24 years old, and after 5 weeks of updating my expression potential to 34%, I'm still seeing words like kettle, jaguar, squirt, traumatic, solitary, airfield, canine, rephrase, acoustic, receptive, sparrow, nutrition, slang, stumbling, optimism, and so forth. I would say 80% of the words I've seen on here are elementary school level, while the other 20% are middle-school level. I have not "learned" a single word that I would consider calling high-school level.

You'll learn very little for the time you spend playing. Of the few words that were new to me, hardly any of them were repeated more than a few times, often in the same day. You are bombarded with far too many words over time, when it should just be reinforcing groups of words before moving on to more. Also, the only time you actually learn anything is when you read through the definitions after each game. There's nothing at all to be learned by playing the games. It teaches you like a dictionary does. But the worst part is that there is no context or pronunciation! After playing for long enough, you will eventually unlock a game that doesn't count toward your EP, but does have recordings of the words being spoken as well as context examples. However, you can only access these one random word at a time. You are given very little time to read the examples. This means that pronunciation and context are on the game, but you can't look them up or access them at all while supposedly updating your potential to express yourself with words you don't necessarily understand.

The definitions are often VERY weak. The part of speech (verb, noun...) is not given at all. If a definition is too long then it simply cuts off rather than allowing you to scroll down to read the whole thing. Many words appear in their own definition, which is never acceptable. Words with multiple definitions will only have one of them provided. Some definitions couldn't possibly be more wrong: inflammable is defined as, "Things that burn very easily. Not only is it the opposite of the true meaning, but it's also defining a noun, whereas inflammable is an adjective.

The simple little games become mundane very quickly. You would have to play this game for several months to really get that much out of it, but it will get very boring long before that. Most of what your coach says to you is hardly better than mindless dribble. The graphics are quite simple and the music is extremely limited and dull. One day it randomly told me that the word of the week is minstrel. Apparently the word of the week means a word you won't be learning, because it never gave me the definition or even put it in any of the games. It's not that uncommon for it to tell me that my EP has been updated when in fact it is exactly the same.

Ultimately, the developers were too lazy to provide the necessary elements for learning a new word, make it accurately gauge your personal level, come up with enough games to keep it interesting for a long time; they didn't even make sure they got the definitions right! They started with a great idea, and released a product that falls unforgivably short of its potential.

Left-handed people avoid.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: December 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Consists of various games to increase your vocabulary and general spelling. Good but not comparable to the general Brain training series as this amount of games are limited. Some games require you to turn the device sideways. As with other games this one however doesn't ask whether you are right or left handed and assume the first. It is therefore a real struggle to play a time based game with the information behind your writing hand. If you are lefthanded, avoid! This will only amount to hours of frustration.

Fail.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 12
Date: March 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

There may have been linguists behind this product, but they didn't seem to know how best to implement their knowledge. While it might be useful to a foreign learner of English, with such useful advice as, "A verb is an action word in a sentence!", it has some deficiencies that limit it for both native and foreign speakers. Many of the games require you to know the meaning of a word in advance, otherwise you'll simply be playing "guess which meaning is the right one".

Not recommended. Language learning software has tremendous potential, but it isn't even hinted at here.

Effective but repetitive

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

My Word Coach for the Nintendo DS is an educational video game designed to teach new vocabulary words. I really wanted to like this game, but ultimately, it fell short of what I had hoped it would be.

The most important thing to know when considering purchasing this game is that it probably will help to build your vocabulary, but only if you use it to the point where all the word games get old. In fact, in my experience with this game, I had to play on average twenty to thirty minutes just to reach my daily quota of words. The problem is that there are only about six games, which means that things get old fairly fast. Perhaps I am just not a very disciplined person, but I began to lose interest in the games after a few days, and by a couple of weeks, I stopped playing the game altogether.

However, the games really can help you learn new words. When you start out, the game evaluates what level your vocabulary is at. Then it gradually introduces new words. I felt the balance was good between new words, words I already knew, and words that I was in the middle of learning. Also, the game has a dictionary feature included, so you can easily look up definitions to words.

The games are fairly fun, but nothing super spectacular. Some games are more helpful, like the game where you write a letter in to complete a word matching a given definition, while other games are less helpful, like the falling blocks game that teaches you how to spell words rather than what they mean. I felt the handwriting recognition was fairly good.

In conclusion, if you like educational video games and are a very disciplined, consistent person, this game might be able to help you learn new words. However, I think for most people this game will get old after only a few weeks or less, so you may want to reconsider purchasing this game.

Could be so much better

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It has potential, but falls way short. It needs pronunciations with the words - much like My Spanish Coach. It should also include part of speech in the definition, and at some point, should give you an example of the word being used. They need more games - some are just too tedious to do very often. It focuses more on spelling than on learning definitions. Nonetheless, both my husband and I have persisted through the game for two months and have both reached a point where our expression potential has not updated for three weeks of daily play regardless of the fact that we have reached our word quota almost every day. I hope UBI Soft will put some more time into this game and make the improvements necessary to make it both useful and fun.

Good but not great!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 22 / 32
Date: November 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is a week attempt to "Improve your Vocabulary". One of the most important parts of learning a new word is how to pronouce it. This game does not do that. I had hoped the game would say the word and at a minimum show how to pronounce it. During game play, only music is played.

There are only two games that help you build your vocabulary...there should be more (increasing your vocabulary is not easy if your memory isn't great, so repetition is key). The other games challenge your spelling.

Before playing any of the games, the first step should be to learn a new word and it's definition. And then based on that, these games should then challenge those new words and definition. Instead you are challenged on words and their definition without having learned them first and of course, if you aren't familiar with a word and it's meaning you lose points if you guess wrong. This game also lacks a word usage challenge. By the way, if you are not a fast reader, you won't do so well at playing "Split Decision".

This game gets 3 stars because the graphics and usability are good and the games are challenging and fun. I hope in it's next version, all these issues will be resolved.

I don't recommend this for anyone younger than ten. I'm sure it's rated "E" because of the lack of sexual content, inappropriate language and violence.

Happy Learning...

Fun for children, a little boring for adults

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: November 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game can be fun for children but the vocabulary is far too simple for most adults to find challenging. If you are over the age of twelve this game is probably not for you.

Great concept, fairly lame execution

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: December 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I really wanted to like this product. I love some of the other learning products that my kids play on their DS's, like Big Brain Academy. I've been looking for a way to help them build their vocabulary, and I could use a refresher as well. Unfortunately, this product does not really offer a very enjoyable gaming experience. You'd have almost as much fun with flashcards, and would probably learn as much. If you want something to save you the trouble, though, this wouldn't be a bad product. I expect to tinker with it a few minutes each day, and see where I am in terms of vocabulary after a few weeks. A few features may bug you a little bit, though.

First, you turn it on and a professor type explains the program and its importance. You set up a profile and the program introduces you to games one at a time, and explains how to check your stats. You are encouraged to play each game every day, about 15 minutes daily, and as you play and get better new features and play levels are introduced. Some of the games are okay, and others are a bit silly.

One of the better games encourages you to match words to a definition, or definitions to a word. Another game encourages you to supply the missing letter by drawing it with the stylus. While the program has some trouble differentiating between certain letters (it kept reading my Hs as Rs, my Is as Ts or LS, etc.), it is pretty easy to adapt to it and write letters in a way it will recognize. Still, I'm not so sure about the educational value of filling in missing letters: being able to complete a spelling is not the same as knowing a word. Of course, each exercise gives you the opportunity to review definitions of the words you've just covered, but that part -- which is where the learning seems to take place -- feels like those flash cards again.

One of the sillier (i.e. the most annoying) games is a sort of "Alphabet Soup" game. It seemed to be okay at first: a bunch of letters are in a soup and you are supposed to rearrange them to create a word that matches a definition that appears on the top screen. The problem is that as soon as the letters appear they start to sink back into the soup. You have to keep "mixing them" at the same time as you are trying to put them in order, so that the unplaced letters won't sink into the soup and be lost. What happens to me over and over again is that I get all the letters but one and then the last letter sinks into the soup. Then the game forces me to wait until my time runs out, which could be as much as another 30 seconds, before it goes on to the next word -- even though at this point it is impossible to finish the word since one of the letters is gone.

The most frustrating feature is that there is no obvious connection between the words I am tested on each day. As far as I can tell, I just get new words each day. What I'd like is for the program to help me systematically review the words I miss in each program and occasionally review words I've gotten right. Then I could have some sense that I was actually building my vocabulary, that I was learning to use new words on a regular basis. As it stands, I am likely to pick up a few new words here and there, but there seems to be nothing in the program that guarantees this. This is where, in my view, flash cards may be even more effective than this program. When I use flash cards I remember and set aside the words I miss and review them until I've gotten them down and secure.

I also have no clear sense that the exercises here are helping to create a usable vocabulary. For the most part I am tested on word recognition, and definition identification. There are no exercises that encourage me to select the right word to employ in the right context -- fill in the blank type exercises, and the like. So while this is a great concept, and while a good vocabulary builder would likely encourage me to take even more advantage of my son's DS, for now he can relax because this program is not really notable enough to win a lot of my attention.

A great game but

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: December 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have to knock off the 2 stars because there is not left handed option. There is a level/stage called "Block letters" Where the DS needs to be turned to it's side like playing "Brain Age" (1 & 2). And for a lefty like me, your arm overpowers the top screen and you can't really see anything so It becomes difficult to play. But since a lot of the levels/stages don't require you to turn your DS sideways, It's still 80% enjoyable.

Warning: Worst calligraphy ever!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: December 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have not seen writing detection this bad ... well... since ever.
Just try to write an "E" and see what happens.

If I write the capital "E" it will pick it up as "A" or "F" Or "I"

The lower case "e" gets picked up as "z" or "o"

Even brain age had much better recognition this piece of ...
This game might just frustrate the heck out of you!

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