Learn Chinese with My Chinese Coach

If you want to learn Chinese, Ubisoft offers a game for the Nintendo DS called My Chinese Coach. My Chinese Coach offers up to 1000 lessons in Chinese, with 10,000 words, and 1500 phrases. My Chinese Coach teaches the Pinyin Method. The characters in the game are simplified characters, which is now the standard version of characters being used in mainland China. The dictionary that is built into My Chinese Coach also shows traditional characters, which are still used in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

There are different modes of game play that help you learn Chinese. These game play modes cover speaking, writing and listening to Chinese. At first, the lessons and games are locked. As you score higher on the games, more material is opened up to help you learn Chinese. With a recent price drop in My Chinese Coach, you now have an opportunity to learn the basics of the Chinese language for under $20.

The game starts by offering you a test to see how well you already know Chinese. I took the test and based on my current knowledge, the game was unlocked up to the eighth lesson. This placement seemed to be about right. However, the test seemed a little a short to come up with such a quick assessment of my knowledge of the Chinese language. It would be quite possible for a player to answer the few questions in the assessment correctly and be placed too high. I still found that I still needed to go back to the start of the game to learn some of the characters that were being shown in the later lessons. The screen that allows you to navigate through the lessons highlights many of the attractions around Beijing. Many Olympic venues are highlighted on the navigation screen.

I have tried to learn Chinese on and off for the past 10 years. I have taken classes, read books with complimentary CDs, and even used some cheaper PC software for trying to learn Chinese. So far, I have found that the lessons and games offered in My Chinese Coach are holding my interest a little more than the tools I have used for my past attempts at learning Chinese. My goal is to unlock all of the lessons that are contained in the software, possible by doing 1 lesson per day. With over 1000 lessons that are contained in My Chinese Coach, this will be considerable undertaking.

A strong component to My Chinese Coach is that it forces you to learn Chinese characters. In my last forays into trying to learn Chinese, I only concentrated on speaking and listening. Some may find that learning to read a write a little difficult, but I am finding that I am able to recognize quite a few more characters, even with the few lessons that I have completed.

Since My Chinese Coach is on the Nintendo DS gaming platform, you can take the game anywhere. If you are a parent, take My Chinese Coach along while you wait for your child's swimming lessons, music lesson, soccer practice, and wherever else their activities lead you.

Sometimes it is difficult to make out some of the more complicated Chinese characters while in lesson mode. The font sized used is a little too small. This limitation has more to do with the small screen size offered by the the Nintendo DS. This is overcome be using the writing and calligraphy practice section to become more familiar with the characters.

My Chinese Coach will not replace taking a class in Chinese. The game is not a replacement for a real life teacher. However, My Chinese Coach can be used to supplement course material, and provides very good tools to reinforce vocabulary and character recognition. For a price tag of under $20 at most retail outlets, and the time you put into the lessons, you will come away with a much greater understanding of the Chinese language.