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| My Word Coach | 
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| From: UBI Soft
Category: Video Games
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $14.85
You Save: $5.14 (26%)
New (15) Used (2) from $14.53
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 1114
Platform: Nintendo Wii
ESRB: Everyone
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: 17342
UPC: 008888173427
EAN: 0008888173427
ASIN: B000ME3M5O
Release Date: November 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | The game evaluates your level, tracks and rewards your personal progression | | • | 17,000 words | | • | Large variety of games | | • | DS-Wii connectivity | | • | Includes 5 multiplayer games when linking the DS and Wii |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Would you like to express yourself more clearly and with confidence? Want to improve your vocabulary in a straightforward and entertaining way? In your daily life, knowing the right word can make all the difference, and My Word Coach offers a fun and challenging way to improve verbal skills through a series of engaging activities and exercises. ESRB Rated E for Everyone
Amazon.com
My Word Coach, developed in collaboration with linguists, helps players improve their verbal communication and vocabulary in a fun way. Practice with six different exercises to choose between. Players can input missing letters from words, spell out the answers to various definitions, choose which word matches a particular definition, form specific words with Scrabble-like tiles, and more. Three levels of difficulty are available, and the game includes a built-in dictionary of over 17,000 words. Two of the games can be played multiplayer over wireless and five multiplayer games can be accessed when linking the Wii and DS. The data of up to three different players can be saved.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Finally! High Expectations Met - Scholarly Success for Autodidacts! November 10, 2007
94 out of 95 found this review helpful
I spent an hour wringing my hands at the store deciding whether or not to plunk down the $50 bucks for this game. I love word games from Boggle, to Scrabble, to the Jumble in the newspaper. My concern was that Ubisoft might have dumbed the content down for an audience of younger gamers. Three minutes into the game I saw the words "paroxysm" and "raffishness" pop up and I knew they had done nothing of the sort. The result is a great success that exceed my high expectations of how a word training game might be. The game is not anything like the shallow Brain Age/Big Brain Academy but rather an in depth word training game designed by phd linguists. There is some actual meat to this game unlike the others that satisfies your quest for knowledge and fun simultaneously. The game really trains your vocabulary skills. In fact I would think it would even be acceptable for someone studying for the vocabulary portion of an ACT, SAT, or the graduate GRE Exam and even ESL. From the get go Word Coach tests the player to find a baseline at which to start building from and provides tutorials on how to play the learning games. The controls are really easy and really satisfying that is fun to carry out. The spray painting of letters takes a few minutes to get but within no time it'll feel second nature. I began and within about 40 minutes had reached my quota for the day. After that you can continue playing but the game won't rate you or introduce too many words as there is science and thought going on to keep the learning of words manageable. As soon as I sat down the controller my Mom a former English teacher picked up the game and played for an hour and a half, and she "doesn't like games" but there was something about this one. So you'll find it accessible for the non gamer as well. We even battled each other in missing letter multi player. Conclusion, My Word Coach is high brow yet approachable for anyone that wants to improve their vocabulary and become more literate or expressive. If you were on the fence then get off and go buy. This game and Mario Galaxy have justified my Wii purchase tenfold. Ubisoft also makes My Word Coach Spanish and French for the DS. Here's to hoping they bring these titles to the Wii or I might just have to buy a DS after getting to try the store clerks copy.
Vocabulary and Spelling Done Right November 7, 2007
48 out of 50 found this review helpful
My Word Coach
Do you have a kid who hasn't read enough to build a large vocabulary and strong spelling skills? This game provides lots of word practice with a series of different games -- my son seemed almost surprised at the end of his first series that he had learned so much. There's lots of reading (definitions, etc.) which I think would make it tricky for kids much younger than ten. Each player sets a profile(up to 8 profiles - after that you play as a guest or delete a prior profile)that provides progress graphs and high score history for encouragement. There are vocabulary games (e.g. Split Decision where you match the word on the screen to its correct definition) and spelling games (what could be more fun than grafitti-style spray painting to fill in the missing letter or correct a wrong letter?), with six training games in all. We haven't tried the multiplayer option yet, nor have we used the DS to play Missing Letter. There appear to be lots of options to keep a player's interst as the game gets harder -- for instance, both definitions may be wrong in Split Decision. My soon-to-be eleven year old played for over two hours tonight -- there's a slight learning curve, but he figured it out on his own without getting frustrated. He intuitively began picking up on clues such as how to guess a word from the definition. My son says it's "lots of fun -- almost, but not quite, like a regular game." There's an emphasis on vocabulary that should prove helpful to young readers who have a basic familiarity with a word, but the game also provides lots of spelling opportunities. I predict libraries and after-school programs will be holding lots of competitions with this game. We liked Spelling Challenges (DS version is portable and only $20 ) -- we love My Word Coach.
 GOOD WAY to review the words you alread know. BAD WAY to learn new terms. February 1, 2008
19 out of 25 found this review helpful
For people whose English is their second language, this game presents a GOOD WAY to review the words they already know. However, it's a BAD WAY to learn new terms. It's because of the reasons listed below
1.The words are explained but there are no examples that show how to use them. As a result, you can create non-natural English sentences even though you know their meanings.
For example, "influx" is explained as "the arrival of large group of people or things". That's it. There's no example. This is just like learning new words by memorizing an English dictionary which is next to useless. It's because you won't be able to create correct English sentences. Further more, it's very difficult to remember them without good examples.
In this area, this game is far more inferior to Collins Cobuild-advanced Learners English Dictionary, paper back, ISBN 978-0007210121. It has multiple examples for every term. One of the examples for influx is "The increase of 4.5 million in America's foreign-born represented the largest immigrant influx of any decade in US history"
2.There's no pronunciation! English is a living language. You might know the words but other people won't understand what you're speaking if you pronounce them wrong! Again, In this area, this game is not as good Collins Cobuild-advanced Learners English Dictionary. It contains a CD with pronunciation of all the words it explains.
3.The interface is good in many areas but it's difficult to use in "Missing letter" game. Here, you have to spray painting to fill in the missing letter. Wii controller is the wrong tool for this. Many times, I just finished spraying part of a letter A when the game recognized it as "I". It's very frustrating because I had to erase it and start it all over again. That made me exceed the time limit.
Overall, it's a fair tool to be used as a supplement to other tools for improving your vocabulary skill. I own it.
Very good tool for learning new words via the Wii! December 31, 2007
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Just a word of warning - I had a little trouble with the controls, getting the screen to scroll either to the right or the left - seemed it did opposite to what I wanted.
I still have some learning to do on that end but when talking about the content of the game - it's excellent! Lots of games to keep the player going and what's nice is that REAL learning is taking place. This is very simlar to the DS game in content but certainly easier for us "visually challenged" presbyopic folks (that means we need reading glasses!!).
If it takes a short while to get used to the controls - hang in there. I think the game is worth getting the hang of the controls. And hey, it's one place where you can spraypaint letters and not get chastized for it!
An Innovative, but Flawed Game January 28, 2008
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
My husband and I are in our early twenties and are both previous english majors who are enamored with words. We did not have fun with this game.
1. In terms of ease of gameplay, the controls are awful. They appear to have wanted to take advantage of the novelty of the wii-mote with no thought as to how the difficulty of maneuvering would impact gameplay.
2. The overall tone of the walk-through and the grading was a bit patronizing.
3. Performing the same tasks over and over again in order to open new ones was not interesting.
4. While they managed to pick challenging vocabulary, much of the words do not seem like particularly useful terms to know.
5. The competition with other players is lacking.
I think there are better games, particularly on the DS and the Wii, to challenge people mentally. I personally favor Big Brain Academy over this game. While those games do not pay much attention to vocabulary or spelling, this game proves to me that there is still a ways to go before we master bringing those subjects into a video game format.
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