Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 82
 Good but not great! November 14, 2007
S. Sims (Dallas, TX USA)
22 out of 32 found this review helpful
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...
 A fun engaging skill builder December 25, 2007
Ward J. Lamb (slate hill, new york United States)
22 out of 27 found this review helpful
I like this game as it has the literary building skills not present in so much product these days.The word challenging could be upped to keep older players engaged,but none the less there are challenges here.
If you want to extend your vocabulary, My Word Coach is a decent mentoring tool. It raises a variety of challenges, but it controls much better on DS than Wii.
An Interface doesn't get much simpler, but the graphic look is clean and ledgible.
Not only engaging and challenging, but you will really learn new vocabulary while increasing expression.
No doubt,This product could be stylistically refined, however it is such fun to be able to engage in enjoyable activities- including word recognition, spelling challenges, and vocabulary definition. The game includes 16,800 words from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary! Not bad!!
When you play My Word Coach, it assesses, monitors, and rewards your verbal-Expression Potential, It scores your ability to actually understand, command and express the English language effectively. The higher your number out of a possible 100%, the better you are able to express, command words- and ultimately master language! I found playing with my daughter very engaging.She is 14,and told me it was her favorite game this year!!.
While the Wii(tm) version takes advantage of the Wii Remote(tm) through lively mini-games and user friendly controls, the Nintendo DS(tm) version makes full use of the system's dual Touch Screen.It provides me and my family engagaging skill building activity. My daughter is left handed and she had no problems with the controls.(others mentioned this as a possible factor)
All in all I like it very much!! Better yet, so does my daughter.If you like scrabble this is a game for you.
 a fun and educational tool - great for homeschoolers or braniacs January 14, 2008
Katie C. Nelson (USA)
22 out of 30 found this review helpful
I homeschool my son and he LOVES video games so I am always thrilled to find an educational game for his DS system. Sometimes when I need to go out and run errands he brings his Nintendo DS along and having a game like this can extend his learning time for the day in a fun and creative way.
Truthfully, he would still pick up a Mario or Sonic game over this if he had his choice (what kid wouldn't?) but if I ask him to pick a learning game, he will gladly choose this one. He loves words and has quite an extensive vocabulary already so this game is a natural fit. The easy level was way too easy for him, but the more difficult levels offer some good challenges. He likes the format and the way you can unlock more challenging games.
This game would be perfect for anyone looking to build their vocabulary and word skills.
Great concept, fairly lame execution December 30, 2007
Nathan Andersen (Florida)
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
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.
 The Word is Deplorable June 28, 2008
The Jolly Roger
9 out of 33 found this review helpful
Producers of games premised on the enlightened arm of self-improvement, such as My Word Coach, are faced with baleful prospects from their work's incipience. First, they must overstep their otherwise stale chosen field with amusing sub-games to create a panorama of options to suit the players fancy at any given time: the player's willpower alone is insufficient to fund the puritan regiment. You won't find this in Word Coach, a game that specializes in eroding the willingness of even the most patient and forgiving gamers. Like other intelligence-raising games, the game begins with a paucity of sub-games to engage; in the case of Word Coach, two menial games are initially proffered: Missing Letter and Split Decision. Missing Letter takes "patented" advantage of the system's stylus, presenting the player with a word with the eponymous missing letter for him to write capitalized in the space below. Yes, that's all. Oftentimes the letter is not even one of especial difficulty, requesting the player to guess what letter is followed after -NG at the end of a word. Split Decision is an equally inane source of boredom. A poorly constructed definition is supplied on the upper screen and the answer is behind one of two opposing arrows. Sadly, there is not even a fifty-fifty chance of answering the question correctly, but a 100% one since the wrong definition is frequently egregiously inaccurate in any context. After completing either of these games the player is offered the chance to review his set of words met in each game accompanied by the same remarkably unmemorable definition.
The player is awarded with differently styled games not through his performance, but by his daily tenacity and persistence to withstand the Sisyphus labors. I could only stand to play enough to earn two others: Pasta Letters and Block Letters. As asinine as it sounds, one is to spell out a word with quickly sinking alphabet letters drowning in what appears to be a sea of expired canned tomato soup. The only way to cause them to resurface is to blow into the microphone--a task that will undoubtedly make you light-headed if not utterly swoon, for the letters disappear at an astounding rate. Block Letters is worse than vomiting up that endless bowl of tomato soup in Pasta Letters if you were hungry for more ways to dull your mind. This time, one is to spell out words from letters that fall with prodigious slowness with no way to alter the speed. Both are utterly uneventful.
Besides the uncreative and atrophied style, your "coach" has as little character and enthusiasm as the games themselves, serving absolutely no purpose. "And while were at inserting a useless role," said the producers of My Word Coach," why don't we make four others fill it and give them all stereotypical appearances and names of the ethnicity rainbow while softening our racial vision with enough political correctness to avoid angering anybody?" White man and former Breakfast Club tyrant Alastair Archibald, pant-suited feminist and iron-boxed businesswoman Veronica Munroe, afro'ed brotha from da hood brought out to inspire intercity youths Lucius King, and under-nourished, pretentious good-Brit Penny, are all at your service--and are really all the same under-developed person. They all have that same unchanging and featureless face shared by the poor fool who would attempt to raise his vocabulary for the SAT or GRE with this ponderous gourd of a game assigned with an uninspiring and tedious music score most likely written on a gas station's bathroom's used toilet paper roll by a fired construction worker and wife beater.
Don't buy this game. Read literature, write down words you don't know, look them up, and practice with them with notecards and filling in sentences.
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