Rocket Chinese Reviews

Just starting out but seems to have very good interaction and structure. Particularly like the voice recognition so you can have a, somewhat, proper conversation.

Rocket Languages definetly has all the tools you need to learn a language, however, you will definetly need to repeat each lesson multiple times and it's hard to use while exercising, cooking, etc. But if you commit to it and review each lesson several times you could definetly achiece fluency with Rocket Chinese. The conversational style and Rocket reviews really make Rocket Languages a great tool.

I like the way learning is set up. It is nice that there is both a native Chinese speaker and someone else who learned Chinese speaking each phrase. Also, there is both a woman and man speaking the words so that helps with the learning. Once I finish Chinese, I may take on learning Spanish.

I do like that the literal translation is also provided. It helps to understand how the sentence is structured. I often try to do it in my head but it's nice to the see it confirmed.

Alright, so I have been using Rocket Chinese for about a year now. I was attracted mostly by the price and the amount of features involved. I was not about the drop hundreds of dollars on Rosetta's Stone or Pimsleur, but I did want quality learning. There are hundreds of ways to learn Mandarin for free on the internet. I realize that. But I needed a place that could provide grammatical support, and have comprehensive lessons that taught a higher level of understanding to the language. Here is what I got:
-Good entertaining lessons
-Motivation
-An overall look at the language
-Chinese culture
And here are the things that I have noticed need improvement
-Despite the recent edits to the "Hear it, Speak it" I definitely think that it can be fixed up even more
-The point system can be more comprehensive for example someone that practices every day, reviewing old lessons will never get the same credit as someone who just puts random answers for quizzes, answers BS for blog posts. I know the end goal is to learn the language and these people wont be doing that but you get the idea
-Chinese writing section I think could definitely use some improvements, and a way of testing yourself to learn the characters.

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The Rocket Chinese course is comprehensive and contains a good variety of tools. There are a couple negatives though. The main one is that the male voice actor's pronunciation is not very good. That's a huge drawback when you're trying to learn to pronounce a language correctly. Offline use on Android is fairly minimal. It's painful to enter pinyin for exercises that use it, for instance you can't just enter dan1cheng2, you need to find a way to enter dānchéng. Some odd vocabulary items are introduced early, like "go dutch" or "seat belts". It would be nice to have some additional drills and reading material. Overall though, if they could replace the male voice (or he could improve his pronunciation and cadence) it would be a very good course. (I haven't used their customer service so I'm giving the benefit of the doubt with 5 stars.)

I liked using the program during the 6-day trial, but I am a little upset. I started to purchase the premium package, but I changed my mind. I closed the purchase window before finalizing the purchase. However, Rocket Languages billed my credit card anyway. Now I will have to dispute this as an unauthorized charge.

Rocket Languages is a great way to learn languages because it feels as if I am talking to a person face to face instead of listening to some man named dave and a lady called lin (I think) who are speaking over a microphone which is good thing so xiexie ;) .

The price can't be beat! I especially enjoy that I control what and when I want to focus on for my study sessions. The interactive audio sessions actually helps me to think in the target language. I'm having problems with the speech recognition and will likely need to contact tech support; however, the first few hours into the course and I'm enjoying what I received for the price.

The record with voice recognition grading really helps to get your pronunciation right, and the playback of your voice really helps you find out why you did get the grade you expected. These tools give a strong incentive to practice speaking, and have helped me to progress faster. The downside is that these tools are only practically useful on PC and not useful on Android because of speed and different limited web page. (I cannot speak for Apple versions).

I would give the course 5 stars if all features were available on all platforms.

On android viewing the website, speech recognition is so much slower to respond, and much less accurate, so the time delays become frustrating - it is very dependent on internet and wireless speed. The key thing android misses is it that it has no ability to play back what you said (so that you can hear and correct your own mistakes). From the forum comments this appears to have been missing for 2 years or more, and I think Rocket Languages should make playback of your own voice a priority fix for android users.

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