4
Where to Buy

The Pronoun Party App Review

App Info

Price: $1.99

Overview

The Pronoun Party offers basic practice with identifying male/female and plural pronouns in subjective, objective and possessive cases.  The app includes four levels of difficulty and each level can be played on four different themes, which vary the scenery and the props that children can “give” to the person referred to in the sentence.

Features include:

  • 4 levels of difficulty
  • 4 themes within each level
  • Intuitive interface
  • Scoring system
  • Option to turn background music off if desired

Quality

The Pronoun Party is a good quality app that young children will find easy to use. Developers kept everything very simple, so there are not a lot of confusing controls. Users simply choose the level of play, choose a theme/background, and then follow the spoken directions to move objects to the correct person or group of people based on the pronoun used. The app did crash a couple of times during its test, and there were a few sentences that did not seem to have their voice over files, which might make use a bit difficult for non-readers.

Education

This app is very bare-bones.  The games all work exactly the same way: A sentence using one of the target word is presented in the center of the screen and there is an object referred to in that sentence.  The picture of the object is to be slid to the left or to the right to be “given” to the correct person or group of people displayed.  The level of play controls which words are targeted (girl/boy on level one, he/she/they on level two, his/her/their on level three and him/her/them on level four).  The background controls the types of items to give to the characters, such as beach toys in the beach scene and party food in the party scene.  The location of the characters changes from time to time, so players need to attend to the screen or they will make a mistake.

The Pronoun Party requires children to listen to those sentences, process and comprehend the pronoun, and then move the item to the correct character.  The characters change sides of the screen from time to time, and there are several different boys, girls and groups that are used.

One large concern is that many of the sentences are very repetitive, while changing the color of the item to be moved.  For example, at one point, the app asked me to “Give the kite to her” four times in a row, changing only the color of the kite.  Another example can be found in the Beach scene, where the sentence “Give the water toy to the girl” came up many times in succession, while the picture of the toy changed from a sand bucket to a ball to a pair of swim goggles.  Parents should also be aware that this app is Australian in origin, so some of the names of items are different than American children will be used to, such as using the word “biscuit” for “cookie.” There were also a few sentences that did not play their sound files, though this glitch seems to be random rather than associated with any one action in the app.

Entertainment

The play on this app is very repetitive and, while it will help young children or disabled children practice deciphering the meanings of pronouns, many youngsters are likely to find it to be boring.  Though there are four themes with backgrounds, these are simply backdrops that make sense with the objects being given to the characters.  There is no interaction with them at all.  The sentences in each level are very similar to one another, so all children need to attend to is the actual pronoun in the sentence.  In this day of glitzy and complex apps that do everything but teach plumbing for the proverbial kitchen sink, this app is very low-key.  It strives to give practice for one specific skill (and does that well if in plain vanilla style), but definitely could be jazzed up a bit to help it hold children’s attention more effectively.  For example, it would be pretty easy to show multiple items in several colors and ask children to “give the red kite to her.”

Value

If your child needs lots of practice with understanding and using genders and basic pronouns, then this app will be a good value for family or classroom use.  However, for most kids, there won’t be much replay value, so even the $2.99 price tag may seem a bit steep.  It’s possible to play through the entire app (one scene for each of the four levels) in about fifteen to twenty minutes, and without some sort of score keeping or incentive beyond the “Congratulations you’ve finished the level” screen, that is likely to be the last time a child chooses to open it.

Child Friendliness

The Pronoun Party is an extremely safe app for the children to use.  There is no access to the internet or outside sites, no in-app purchases, and no social media.

  • NO external links
  • NO social media
  • NO in-app purchase
  • NO 3rd party ads
The Pronoun Party
The Pronoun Party
The Pronoun Party is a bare-bones, repetitive source of practice sentences with pronouns and gender words that will help young children practice understanding these words in spoken sentences and responding to them appropriately.
Quality
Education
Entertainment
Value
Child Friendly
4
Where to Buy