My French Coach and My Spanish Coach
Encyclopedia
My French Coach and My Spanish Coach are educational game
s developed by Sensory Sweep Studios
and published by Ubisoft
for the Nintendo DS
, iOS, PlayStation Portable
, and Wii
. They are part of Ubisoft's My Coach
series, and were released for the Nintendo DS on November 6, 2007 in North America
, for the Wii on November 23, 2007 in the European Union
(North American release date to be announced), and My Spanish Coach was released for the PlayStation Portable on October 7, 2008, and the iOS on June 6, 2009 For their releases in Europe and Australia, the games were renamed My French Coach Level 1: Beginners and My Spanish Coach Level 1: Beginners.
French and Spanish language teachers assisted with development of the gameplay for both games, which concentrates on teaching French or Spanish using lessons and minigames. As the player progresses the lessons, the gameplay uses increasingly complex words and phrases. The games received praise and criticism from various video game publications; they praised the games' effectiveness in teaching the language, but lamented their repetitive nature. The next installments in the series, titled My French Coach Level 2: Intermediate and My Spanish Coach Level 2: Intermediate, also developed and published by Ubisoft, were released in Europe on November 23, 2007 alongside their Level 1 counterparts.
The gameplay of My French Coach and My Spanish Coach consists of the player completing lessons that introduce new vocabulary and then focus on mastering the words through several puzzle games. As the player progresses through the game, the words increase in difficulty. When first starting the game, the player takes an introductory test that gauges their initial comprehension level of the French or Spanish language. The player is then placed into a level reflective of the score they received on the test. A player who scores highly will be able to skip many of the initial levels and more basic concepts. When starting a lesson, the player is shown ten new words, which include nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs, as well as their meanings and proper enunciation.
Following this, the player is offered a choice of eight minigames to test their knowledge of the words given in the lesson. These minigames are Multiple Choice, Hit-A-Word, Word Find, Flash Cards, Fill in the Blank, Memory, Bridge Builder, and Spelltastic. In Multiple Choice, the player must select the correct French or Spanish translation of an English word from four choices in a limited time frame. Hit-A-Word is a Whac-A-Mole
game in which the player must hit the most amount of moles with the correct translation of an English word within the allotted time. Word Find is a word search
in which the player must find the French or Spanish translations of a set of English words or phrases. In Flash Cards, the player is given a French or Spanish word and must choose the card with the proper English translation. In Memory, the player must select from a set of face-down cards a French or Spanish word and its English translation. Bridge Builder tests sentence structure; the player has to construct a proper sentence from a set of given words. In Spelltastic, the player listens to a French or Spanish word and spells it using a keyboard within the allotted time. For Fill-in-the-Blank, the player selects the proper conjugation of a French or Spanish verb within a sentence.
Whenever a player correctly answers a question or solves a puzzle in a minigame, they gain "mastery points" on the word they successfully answered. The minigames can be increased in difficulty; on higher difficulty levels, players will acquire more mastery points when successfully completing a minigame. For instance, in Multiple Choice, the player has 50 seconds to select an answer for a question on the "Easy" difficulty, and will receive two mastery points for each correct answer. On the "Medium" difficulty, the player has 40 seconds to select an answer and receives three mastery points for each correct answer. The process continues until the player scores fifteen mastery points for every word, allowing the player to proceed to the next lesson. Following the completion of all fifty lessons, the player can continue to learn new words through "open lessons" that contain ten new vocabulary words apiece; the dictionaries of both games each hold nearly 10,000 words. The player can freely access the reference section, which contains a dictionary and phrasebook, at any time. Both the dictionary and phrasebook hold all of the words and phrases in each game, as well as meanings and audio files for both; the player can look through different categories of words and phrases, use a search function, and bookmark chosen phrases.
. During the course of their development by Sensory Sweep Studios, the lessons and minigames were created with the help of French and Spanish language teachers. Ubisoft announced the creation of a new division to create the My Coach series on May 21, 2007, and that Pauline Jacquey, the producer of the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
and Rayman
series, would lead the division. When commenting on the direction of the My Coach series, Jacquey said that she was "developing projects that make people feel that playing games is worth their while, allowing them to spend quality time with family and friends, learn a new skill, or improve their daily lives". Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot commented that, “The timing is right for us to leverage our creativity and to open up the video games market to new consumers who will be attracted by content that can help them learn, grow and feel better in an entertaining way". All three games were released on November 6, 2007 in North America. Ubisoft followed with a PlayStation Portable version of My Spanish Coach, releasing it in North America on October 7, 2008; Wii versions of My French Coach and My Spanish Coach were released in Europe on November 30, 2007. The European releases for My French Coach, titled My French Coach Level 1: Beginners, and My Spanish Coach, renamed My Spanish Coach Level 1: Beginners, were accompanied by My French Coach Level 2: Intermediate and My Spanish Coach Level 2: Intermediate, the next games in the series.
, a website that compiles scores from various video game reviews, My Spanish Coach received a 73/100, based on seven reviews. In a review of the DS versions of both games, IGN called them a "great learning experience" and a more entertaining alternative to traditional methods of learning French and Spanish such as "[h]ours of boring exercises and outdated videos". Eurogamer
claimed the games were not substitutes for proper language lessons, but admitted that "as tools for improving your language skills, whether you're starting from scratch or have some basic knowledge, they're great". In a review of the DS version of My French Coach, Nintendo World Report
called the game "not be the hottest game to ever sit in your DS, but it is an unusually polished product that achieves the edutainment holy grail – it makes learning easy and fun". During the 2007 Christmas holiday season, video game retailer GameStop
recommended My Spanish Coach for "The Academic Gamer". My Spanish Coach led all Nintendo DS games in sales during the week of August 15, 2008 to August 21, 2008.
The gameplay received mixed reviews from critics. In a review of the PSP version of My Spanish Coach, IGN noted that acquiring mastery points in the minigames lead to "quite a bit of grinding
" due to the game's repetitive structure. Nevertheless, IGN accepted that the repetition was an effective way to learn the vocabulary, and noted that "[p]icking up on things like gender
and age, emphasis and the breakdowns of the actual language itself and proper/casual ways of conversing are made fairly clear and reinforced regularly". IGN's review of the DS versions of both games commented that neither game taught the future
or past tense
, calling it one of the "most disappointing" aspects of the game, but praised the effective incorporation of the DS stylus into the minigames. Eurogamer noted that the minigames were "only really good for practicing reading" due to a lack of games for practicing proper speaking, but GameZone
disagreed, noting that the player was able to hear their attempt to speak the French or Spanish words alongside the correct pronunciation during lessons, and praised this aspect as the "most interesting and intriguing feature of [My French Coach and My Spanish Coach]". In a review of the DS version of My Spanish Coach, Nintendo World Report lamented that many of the minigames "exhibit the same type of unimaginative boringness" and that "it takes ages to unlock new lessons and mini-games"; however, it noted that the minigames were "extremely effective" and "constructed extremely well" in terms of teaching the language. Nintendo World Report's review of the DS version of My French Coach called the game's reference section "a very handy travel dictionary", noting that having a dictionary list and a phrasebook with audio files that could bookmark chosen phrases was "an absurd value".
The games' graphics and audio also received praise and criticism from reviewers. IGN's review of the PSP version of My Spanish Coach noted that the fact that the game appeared on multiple platforms contributed to its "sparse look and feel" because the games' graphics and audio were made for the Nintendo DS. Eurogamer praised the games' "clean, crisp visuals" and "jolly accordion music and jolly fiesta music". In contrast, IGN's review of the DS versions of both games called the music "catchy but repetitive" and the graphics "cute but nothing to write home about". GameZone noted that "[t]he visual concept was obviously not a front runner in [the games'] conception", and that the audio of neither game "[does] anything remotely special". Nintendo World Report made note of the games' narrator during the lessons, praising its "clear and coherent glory" in terms of pronouncing the words correctly.
Educational game
Educational games are games that have been designed to teach people about a certain subject, expand concepts, reinforce development, understand an historical event or culture, or assist them in learning a skill as they play...
s developed by Sensory Sweep Studios
Sensory Sweep Studios
Sensory Sweep Studios was an American developer of computer and video games. The studio was located in Salt Lake City, Utah.Founded in 2003 by Dave Rushton, Sensory Sweep was initially a handheld studio, developing games for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PSP...
and published by Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
for the Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
, iOS, PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
, and Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
. They are part of Ubisoft's My Coach
My Coach
My Coach is a series of video games released by UbiSoft for the Nintendo DS and Wii gaming systems. Pauline Jacquey, the series producer, has described the series as a tool for "developing projects that make people feel that playing games is worth their while, allowing them to spend quality time...
series, and were released for the Nintendo DS on November 6, 2007 in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, for the Wii on November 23, 2007 in the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
(North American release date to be announced), and My Spanish Coach was released for the PlayStation Portable on October 7, 2008, and the iOS on June 6, 2009 For their releases in Europe and Australia, the games were renamed My French Coach Level 1: Beginners and My Spanish Coach Level 1: Beginners.
French and Spanish language teachers assisted with development of the gameplay for both games, which concentrates on teaching French or Spanish using lessons and minigames. As the player progresses the lessons, the gameplay uses increasingly complex words and phrases. The games received praise and criticism from various video game publications; they praised the games' effectiveness in teaching the language, but lamented their repetitive nature. The next installments in the series, titled My French Coach Level 2: Intermediate and My Spanish Coach Level 2: Intermediate, also developed and published by Ubisoft, were released in Europe on November 23, 2007 alongside their Level 1 counterparts.
Gameplay
Following this, the player is offered a choice of eight minigames to test their knowledge of the words given in the lesson. These minigames are Multiple Choice, Hit-A-Word, Word Find, Flash Cards, Fill in the Blank, Memory, Bridge Builder, and Spelltastic. In Multiple Choice, the player must select the correct French or Spanish translation of an English word from four choices in a limited time frame. Hit-A-Word is a Whac-A-Mole
Whac-A-Mole
Whac-A-Mole is an arcade redemption game. A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a large, waist-level cabinet with five holes in its top and a large, soft, black mallet. Each hole contains a single plastic mole and the machinery necessary to move it up and down. Once the game starts, the moles...
game in which the player must hit the most amount of moles with the correct translation of an English word within the allotted time. Word Find is a word search
Word search
A word search, word find, word seek, word sleuth or mystery word puzzle is a word game that is letters of a word in a grid, that usually has a rectangular or square shape. The objective of this puzzle is to find and mark all the words hidden inside the box. The words may be horizontally,...
in which the player must find the French or Spanish translations of a set of English words or phrases. In Flash Cards, the player is given a French or Spanish word and must choose the card with the proper English translation. In Memory, the player must select from a set of face-down cards a French or Spanish word and its English translation. Bridge Builder tests sentence structure; the player has to construct a proper sentence from a set of given words. In Spelltastic, the player listens to a French or Spanish word and spells it using a keyboard within the allotted time. For Fill-in-the-Blank, the player selects the proper conjugation of a French or Spanish verb within a sentence.
Whenever a player correctly answers a question or solves a puzzle in a minigame, they gain "mastery points" on the word they successfully answered. The minigames can be increased in difficulty; on higher difficulty levels, players will acquire more mastery points when successfully completing a minigame. For instance, in Multiple Choice, the player has 50 seconds to select an answer for a question on the "Easy" difficulty, and will receive two mastery points for each correct answer. On the "Medium" difficulty, the player has 40 seconds to select an answer and receives three mastery points for each correct answer. The process continues until the player scores fifteen mastery points for every word, allowing the player to proceed to the next lesson. Following the completion of all fifty lessons, the player can continue to learn new words through "open lessons" that contain ten new vocabulary words apiece; the dictionaries of both games each hold nearly 10,000 words. The player can freely access the reference section, which contains a dictionary and phrasebook, at any time. Both the dictionary and phrasebook hold all of the words and phrases in each game, as well as meanings and audio files for both; the player can look through different categories of words and phrases, use a search function, and bookmark chosen phrases.
Development
My French Coach and My Spanish Coach were two of the first three games Ubisoft released for the My Coach series; the other game was My Word CoachMy Word Coach
My Word Coach is a video game from Ubisoft for the Nintendo DS, Wii and iOS. It involves vocabulary and is intended to develop the ability to express oneself with confidence...
. During the course of their development by Sensory Sweep Studios, the lessons and minigames were created with the help of French and Spanish language teachers. Ubisoft announced the creation of a new division to create the My Coach series on May 21, 2007, and that Pauline Jacquey, the producer of the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon is a tactical shooter video game developed by Red Storm Entertainment, a Ubisoft subsidiary, and published by Ubisoft in 2001 for the PC. It was ported to the Mac, PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2002 and to the GameCube in 2003...
and Rayman
Rayman
Rayman is a platform video game published, produced and developed by Ubisoft and is the first game in the Rayman series of videogames. Originally released on the PlayStation in 1995, it was re-released for the Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn and MS-DOS in 1996. It has also been ported to various formats,...
series, would lead the division. When commenting on the direction of the My Coach series, Jacquey said that she was "developing projects that make people feel that playing games is worth their while, allowing them to spend quality time with family and friends, learn a new skill, or improve their daily lives". Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot commented that, “The timing is right for us to leverage our creativity and to open up the video games market to new consumers who will be attracted by content that can help them learn, grow and feel better in an entertaining way". All three games were released on November 6, 2007 in North America. Ubisoft followed with a PlayStation Portable version of My Spanish Coach, releasing it in North America on October 7, 2008; Wii versions of My French Coach and My Spanish Coach were released in Europe on November 30, 2007. The European releases for My French Coach, titled My French Coach Level 1: Beginners, and My Spanish Coach, renamed My Spanish Coach Level 1: Beginners, were accompanied by My French Coach Level 2: Intermediate and My Spanish Coach Level 2: Intermediate, the next games in the series.
Reception
My French Coach and My Spanish Coach have received generally favorable reviews from several video game publications. On MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, a website that compiles scores from various video game reviews, My Spanish Coach received a 73/100, based on seven reviews. In a review of the DS versions of both games, IGN called them a "great learning experience" and a more entertaining alternative to traditional methods of learning French and Spanish such as "[h]ours of boring exercises and outdated videos". Eurogamer
Eurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
claimed the games were not substitutes for proper language lessons, but admitted that "as tools for improving your language skills, whether you're starting from scratch or have some basic knowledge, they're great". In a review of the DS version of My French Coach, Nintendo World Report
Nintendo World Report
Nintendo World Report is a Nintendo-specific video game website that covers Nintendo's current consoles, the Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi, and Wii.-History:...
called the game "not be the hottest game to ever sit in your DS, but it is an unusually polished product that achieves the edutainment holy grail – it makes learning easy and fun". During the 2007 Christmas holiday season, video game retailer GameStop
GameStop
GameStop Corporation is an American video game and entertainment software retailer. The company, whose headquarters is in Grapevine, Texas, United States, operates 6,500 retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New...
recommended My Spanish Coach for "The Academic Gamer". My Spanish Coach led all Nintendo DS games in sales during the week of August 15, 2008 to August 21, 2008.
The gameplay received mixed reviews from critics. In a review of the PSP version of My Spanish Coach, IGN noted that acquiring mastery points in the minigames lead to "quite a bit of grinding
Grind (gaming)
Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or boring tasks not pertaining to the story line of the game...
" due to the game's repetitive structure. Nevertheless, IGN accepted that the repetition was an effective way to learn the vocabulary, and noted that "[p]icking up on things like gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
and age, emphasis and the breakdowns of the actual language itself and proper/casual ways of conversing are made fairly clear and reinforced regularly". IGN's review of the DS versions of both games commented that neither game taught the future
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
or past tense
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
, calling it one of the "most disappointing" aspects of the game, but praised the effective incorporation of the DS stylus into the minigames. Eurogamer noted that the minigames were "only really good for practicing reading" due to a lack of games for practicing proper speaking, but GameZone
GameZone
GameZone is an American multiplatform video game website. GameZone's daily coverage includes reviews, previews, news, hints & cheats, and editorials. Additionally, GameZone offers downloads, a child-targeted website and in association with GameStop, hosts GZGameShop, an online retailer...
disagreed, noting that the player was able to hear their attempt to speak the French or Spanish words alongside the correct pronunciation during lessons, and praised this aspect as the "most interesting and intriguing feature of [My French Coach and My Spanish Coach]". In a review of the DS version of My Spanish Coach, Nintendo World Report lamented that many of the minigames "exhibit the same type of unimaginative boringness" and that "it takes ages to unlock new lessons and mini-games"; however, it noted that the minigames were "extremely effective" and "constructed extremely well" in terms of teaching the language. Nintendo World Report's review of the DS version of My French Coach called the game's reference section "a very handy travel dictionary", noting that having a dictionary list and a phrasebook with audio files that could bookmark chosen phrases was "an absurd value".
The games' graphics and audio also received praise and criticism from reviewers. IGN's review of the PSP version of My Spanish Coach noted that the fact that the game appeared on multiple platforms contributed to its "sparse look and feel" because the games' graphics and audio were made for the Nintendo DS. Eurogamer praised the games' "clean, crisp visuals" and "jolly accordion music and jolly fiesta music". In contrast, IGN's review of the DS versions of both games called the music "catchy but repetitive" and the graphics "cute but nothing to write home about". GameZone noted that "[t]he visual concept was obviously not a front runner in [the games'] conception", and that the audio of neither game "[does] anything remotely special". Nintendo World Report made note of the games' narrator during the lessons, praising its "clear and coherent glory" in terms of pronouncing the words correctly.