Rocket Chinese Reviews

I have so many things to say about Rocket Chinese I don't know where to start. How about the beginning...

I have been interested in learning Chinese for a year now. I have five programs, three I obtained for free and two I paid for. Of the three I found for free, one came from my local library, I didn't feel bad about making a copy because they are public domain, two I downloaded from the Internet and there was no charge.

They are all good programs, I know because I am very critical and skeptical due to the numbers of programs available, I felt I could go broke trying to find a good teaching program for learning Chinese. Of the two programs that I bought one was from a University and one is the Rocket Chinese language course.

The one from the University is good, but I expected much more form a University language course and it is no where near as comprehensive as Rocket Chinese, but to keep things honest, I paid less for the University course.

I am excited about starting this program. I feel I can actually learn Chinese and attain a level of proficiency that will allow me to work and visit China. I like the Pinyin. I like the audio and interactive lesson. I am starting this program with a very positive attitude.

I was curious about Rocket Languages until I began using it, feeling comfortable with it and see the difference. Now, I am comfortable with Rocket Language, Lin Ping ways of healping others to understanding rocket languages.

Microphone does not pick up short words, so it is impossible to check pronunciation on basic language units. Especially debilitating for Chinese learners where tonal pronunciation is crucial.

There is very little teaching. Provided flash card sets dumping 30 new terms with no organization, no intuitive backbone reflective of that of the language itself makes me question the expertise of the instructors. This weakness is also reflected in sloppy errors: voice lines which don't match the text underneath, an occasional condescending tone to the learner, and statements that words completely new to the learner were already covered in previous lessons when they were not.

This software would be acceptable if it was free, but given the high price, it's quality does not justify a purchase.

There is no functionality to allow you to quickly click on a word that you don't know to figure out what it means. Instead you have to wait through the painstakingly slow audio to hear someone tell you what it means. Very frustrating, especially if you're like me and learn better through seeing.

I cannot get the microphone to work in any way. On my phone the app skips and cannot capture my voice properly. ON desktop it doesn't even record always saying "Try again".

I demand a refund unless I can find a fix. I started using this program because I heard the program is very good. Little did I realize the app would be a huge POS.

Do not use this unless you want a terrible experience. Use a more established language learning application like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone.

The voice recognition technology is very inconsistent. It kills the experience because the lesson is based on the use of voice to qualify your speech.

The app kept giving a pop up asking for a review and interrupting my study so here it is.

Of the three online Chinese courses I use. Rocket Chinese is by far the best. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn a language. The easy of usage. The way the courses are laid out all lend toward a pleasant learning experience.

The more I go through the course, the more frustrating it gets. Instead of learning and practicing individual words, I'm supposed to memorize incredibly complex sentences without understanding the meaning of how all the words work together in the sentence. There is no logical progression from learning words to forming sentences. As a result, I forget everything immediately and feel demotivated. And I stumble over the pronunciation because I have to say ten new words at a time. There is no daily reinforcement of previous lessons, which makes the course meaningless over time.