Juiced On Writing

For Christmas this year I asked Santa for a Nintendo DS – not because I’m particularly good at games (or even excited about them) but because the DS has lots of brain-growing games, and I’ve come to that point in my life where I’m becoming aware that I have to keep my mental juices flowing as much as the physical.

A couple of weeks later in the winter sales, I found My Word Coach as a discounted game, and thought it an interesting purchase for somebody who would like to make a living out of writing.

My Word Coach also fits into two of my new year’s resolutions for 2009 – towards increasing my own literary skills for the sake of my writing, and improving my mental side. The arrival of both games console under the tree, and my purchase of My Word Coach brought about two questions, however:

1. Could I – an admitted non-gamer, take to learning using a little games console?
2. And would it really work? Would My Word Coach improve my vocabulary?

Below, in my review of My Word Coach for the Nintendo DS, you will find (possibly) the answers.

1. An Introduction to the Challenge

The DS (and big mother, Nintendo Wii) are known for their Brain Training Games, of course – Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training 1 and 2 were top of the U.K. Christmas DS charts a few weeks ago.

In fact, games consoles themselves – XBoxes, Wiis, and DSes sold like hotcakes around the U.K. My husband, playing Santa, had a hard job sourcing my little turquoise Nintendo DS, which came wrapped up under the tree, along with a cooking game, and of course – the expected Brain Training game itself.

Most children around my small village either possess or are vividly aware of the Nintendo DS games console. And after opening and charging it, I could see why. Using the DS out of the box is childsplay – even for this confirmed games console-phobic. I had a game cartridge in immediately, the power switched on, and was playing my games quite merrily, all within only an hour of receiving and charging it.

Although I know that the games are setup so that you start off poorly – to allow you to add more internal games with improvement -  I must be honest with you and admit that I am incredibly poor at Brain Training. I started off with a brain age of over 80, and have only managed, over the period of ten days, to knock 30 years off that. The target of Age 20 seems beyond me at this point, but I have not done what was suggested – I have not “trained my brain” with the exercises every single day. I have skipped, and gapped my brain training, and introduced My Word Coach into the middle of it. Despite this, the results arisen out of using My Word Coach must speak for themselves regarding my own progress in mental training. I talk of this further in Section 4 of this review.

2. My Word Coach

As with all my other games, I must inform you that I do not read the instructions. Some games for the DS come with limited instruction pamphlets. For instance Guitar Hero instructions still have me not knowing how to use the stummer or the fret bars, nor how to power play – despite actually going to read them.

My Word Coach played out-of-the-box for me. I didn’t need any instructions, as the gameplay itself leads the player through everything. Anytime a new exercise or feature such as statistical buttons are added, a mentor comes on to explain how to play it. The coaches can be changed also – starting off with Doctor Alastair Archibald (looking like the proverbial professor), you can choose to change to three other coaches. The game itself is set at the “Word Training Institute” which is where your coaches are based.

Similarly to Brain Training, your vocabulary progress score is kept track of within the game, as you enter answers to the exercises included. You can see reports on your progress via various buttons, and game features.

The objective to My Word Coach is to present a series of word games to you for training purposes, and to improve your EP – Expression Potential. You are scored towards your communication abilities with others – based on your vocabulary, and command of the English language. An EP can be up to 100. The game suggests that true literary people might obtain an EP of 90, while Editors would achieve 80. On first gameplay you will be shown some other expectations towards EPs for various job roles.

Here’s the embarrassing bit – on first gameplay, I only managed an EP of 45. And it stayed at 45, despite flying through to “driving speed” several games over the course of a week. Taking pity on me, I suspect, I have now been granted an Expression Potential of – wait for it – 46! More on that later…

3. The Gameplay in My Word Coach

On initial startup, as with many DS games, you must setup your profile (so that your results are saved), choose your tutor,  and there is an initial round of tests to rate your base vocabulary level.

Word training games within My Word Coach are designed to test your vocabulary skills and introduce new words to you. There is a core of word training games and some recreational games which are released to you once you become more proficient. The later are not assessed or game results tracked.

As you become more proficient at the word training games, more games are released for you to attempt. Also, the level you can attempt to play the games at are increased and released to you also – starting from easy, to medium, then (apparently – as I haven’t got there yet) hard. Increasingly difficult levels add features to the games themselves also.

Word training games provided are -

• Missing letter – a simple spelling game where a word is spelled in the top panel, with one missing letter. You must write this (using your touch-sensitive panel and stylus) and move onto the next word. You are penalised or bonused dependent on timing also.
• Split Decision – words are shown, and you must choose the definition of these, selecting from two different definitions you must scroll to.
• Pasta Letters – a bowl of pasta soup is displayed, and you must drag the pasta letters to make a word, sort of like a foodie hang-man. Harder levels make the pasta disappear into the soup if you don’t get the word quick enough.
• Block Letters – blocks of letters drop down and you must select these to make a certain amount of words before the case fills. You can bomb away unwanted letters. Note: this particular mini-game requires you to turn the DS onto it’s side, which means that you use the stylus on the right hand side – not particularly good for left-handers.
• Word Shuffle – another definitions game where you have four definitions you must manouvre to, and several words to select from to grab and drop onto the definitions.
• Safecracker - rotate a dial to spell a word – in correct letter order. You are up against a computerised opponent here, and he’s quick – and has the added advantage of actually knowing what the word is he’s spelling out!

After each game you are given a results page which gives you the timing, how many words you correctly chose, and puts your results into context with your previous attempts at the game. The top three (regarding timings) are shown on the right.

After this results page you are also shown an animation for your rating. As you become more proficient you begin to “communicate exceptionally”. More words are added, and levels of the mini-games.

Finally, after the communication rating, you are taken to a glossary section showing you all the words from that mini-game and their definitions. If you knew these, you can exit immediately, or you may want to scroll down to find the definitions for those you did not know – as these will come back to haunt you in later games.

Each day you must reach a target of 100 words – the various games provide you with several words, but you will need to repeat a few games to reach the required level. New words are released to you as you progress, and these are repeated in other games.

If you’re serious about your learning, you can take a look at the results graphs and charts supplied also.

Some Possible Problems in Game Play

So far, in my own limited gameplay I have encountered the following problems -

• Missing Letters – this is reliant on the recognition of your own hand-writing. You write the missing letters in capitals, however sometimes certain letters are picked up incorrectly. For instance, my capital “A” is often recognised incorrectly as a “Q”. To correct this, I have to make sure that I spread the A across the entire screen. This can be a good thing also – sometimes I’ve found my words in-filled with a letter and correct without me actually writing it correctly.
• Problems from a non-American perspective: Despite My Word Coach asking me whether I was in Europe or the U.K. (My Word Coach is distributed through the U.K. by Ubisoft), choosing this appears to have no significance. The game comes with a glossary of words which includes American English spellings. This means the Missing Letters game in particular can go a little wrong (for this English English person) until you realise that it is using an American word – and you need to spell it this way. Examples are ‘jewelry’ vs ‘jewellery’ , ‘homeopathy’ vs ‘homoeopathy’, ‘traveling’ vs ‘travelling’,  and ‘program’ vs ‘programme’. When you’re on a clock-watch and a non-American this can make recognising missing letters and complete words a challenge in places, and is one of the reasons many U.K. reviewers have suggested not giving this game to their British children for learning from. Watch the definitions also, particularly if your letters are scrambled – and partially disappearing into a pasta soup. For example I had a definition come up regarding what I would call a “footpath” but the game was looking for “sidewalk”. And from my supposedly local copy, I was also tested on a Scottish/Irish word which I’ve never heard in common usage, not even within my several Scottish/Irish friends. One of the recreational games uses an American-accented speaker reading out words also, which can be confusing for non-Americans when trying to choose definitions.
• Left-handed problems for one particular game which requires the DS to be used on it’s side.

4. Does it Work?

Yes, it does. Although progress is quite slow, and after receiving all six training games, repeating these multiple times to obtain my word score for the day’s session can become a little monotonous, and all for an EP rating increase of just one point if you’re lucky. Whether I will ever achieve that EP rating of 90+ is difficult to predict – there’s possibly more chance of playing the game more occasionally to refresh my vocabulary, and to simply “learn a new word” for the day.

I have learnt new words through My Word Coach – or more honestly, the definition of these. There are 17,000 words within My Word Coach. When you have a new word presented to you, there’s a good chance that you will recognise it, and have a general feeling of what it means or is associated to – but being tested on a glossary definition means putting a learning slant onto this. As a new years resolution I have set a task to both increase my own vocabulary and my mental suppleness. My Word Coach, as a portion of the many brain training type games out there meets both criteria for me, despite its possible problems. For this reason alone I would recommend it to other writers wanting both a challenge and to use that DS game console their children or they got over the last year or for Christmas.

What was drastically witnessed was how using My Word Coach for a week both updated my own vocabulary and greatly increased my reaction and thinking speed. This was evidenced when I returned to the Brain Training game on my DS, and suddenly found myself working through the brain ages and dropping this by several points at a time. My own mental processing powers and speed are being improved by both games, which is the whole point of any of these.

5. Features of My Word Coach

My Word Coach comes in various cover-prints according to country. The U.S. version has a blue-purple print, this U.K. version shows a yellow cover. Features included in the game are -

• 6 core word training games
• 3 difficulty levels
• A glossary of over 16,500 words and definitions using the Official Cambridge Dictionary.
• 4 different personal coaches to choose from (mentors).
• Save data / results for three people. Or logon as a guest.
• Available at Amazon.co.uk for around £15 from various games sellers. Click on the icon next to this link to open more details for the Amazon US version or to find it in other stores.

No related posts.