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Let me start off by saying that this will not be a standard review. The titles being covered, My French Coach and My Spanish Coach (both for the Nintendo DS) are not actually games; they’re learning tools designed to help the player master a foreign tongue. Essentially, they’re both the same in format, with the obvious difference that one teaches Spanish and one French.

First things first: these “games” (for lack of a better term) will only be interesting to you if you actually want to learn. Despite ads that suggest otherwise, the Language Coach games are not games you play while accidentally learning a language at the same time. It also is not going to be any easier than learning in an actual classroom. What these titles do is make learning convenient by bringing it to the DS. That way, if you are interested in expanding your knowledge of French or Spanish, you can do so at home, on the train, or anywhere else you want to.



As the student, you start off by taking a placement test to see how much you already know. I was pleased that I didn’t have to spend the first few hours of the game re-learning the basics I already knew from high school and college, and was able to skip the first ten lessons (this still only left me with a pre-schooler’s understanding of French, mind you). Each lesson introduces a handful of new words and phrases, and after seeing and hearing them, some mini-games are used to reinforce this knowledge.

The games are where you earn points that can be used to unlock the next lesson; you can’t move on until you have sufficiently mastered the words you’re currently learning. This leads to a lot of repetition, which would normally be a bad thing, but in this case is kind of necessary. You’ll find yourself learning and remembering things just from playing the games over and over again.

The pacing of the game is a little strange. At first, it feels like it’s going too slow, while later on, it starts to move much faster and can be a little overwhelming. Although these coaches were advertised similarly to the Brain Age series (“learn another language in minutes a day!”), I think only fifteen or twenty minutes a day may not be enough once you get past the kindergartener level.



My final verdict was that these games are certainly interesting, and a helpful tool for anyone who is looking to expand his or her lingual skills but doesn’t have the time or money to take actual classes. It’s not the same, but if you’re willing to give it the time and effort it deserves, I do believe that you will have at least a basic grip on either Spanish or French—or both, if you so desire. If you are eager to learn, pick one of these up: $30 is an absolute steal compared to the money you’d spend on one semester’s worth of language lessons. Believe me.

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