Rocket Chinese Reviews

Very good interaction, even though there is no actual interaction with a live person. The testing is excellent with repetition of phrases. One thing I would like is a vocabulary list for each lesson.

This app is like building Noah's Ark. It's hard at first, but eventually the work bears fruit. This forces you to practice everything that is studying the language. Speaking, writing, reading comprehension, naturally connecting associations.

On the plus side, the website is attractive and functions well. The interactive lessons are well-structured and nicely done. I appreciate that they make continued improvements, such as the addition of Write It in the testing sections. Also appreciate that both sound and text are downloadable and the website allows you to listen to only the parts of the lessons you want. I haven't taken advantage of any "social" features like the Forum but I appreciate that Rocket tries to foster a community. The "points" system is an interesting idea.

On the downside, I think there's too much repetition of non-essential vocabulary in the testing sections (I really don't think lesson or unit are words to keep hammering me with). I also think built-in flashcards linked to My Vocabulary would be nice or perhaps automated flashcards for each section. It's also not clear the sequencing of the lessons. This is partially intentional but you'll find yourself tested on material you haven't seen if you don't move across all the lesson types. That said, I've given feedback to the team on many points and they've nearly always been responsive and eager to help and take feedback.

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So far so good, quite pricy though. And maybe it would be fun with something for visual learners. Overall it is very good but still has potential to improve. I have no experience of the customer service so that one is neither good or bad.
How likely I'm to buy it again depends on if I get a big discount on another language.

The ability to download the interactive audio and listen to it offline is great for making use of my time commuting on the London underground, then practicing with the Hear-It / Say-It / Know-It when I get home in the evening.
I hope they make the mobile-app have an offline mode too one day so that I can do the hear/say/know-it practice off-line too.

I think the overall teaching style of this program is pretty great, but the execution is not there yet.

The major shortcoming is the male's pronunciation. I am a complete beginner to studying Chinese, but it's incredibly obvious his pronunciation is absolutely awful. During the conversations, I can understand the female perfectly fine, but I still can't understand the male speaker well even after studying the lesson. I also worry that I may pick up bad habits myself even listening to his speech.

Another minor drawback is that I do not believe there is a way to zoom in or make the characters larger on the mobile app, which is unfortunate since I tend to study these lessons while exercising on an elliptical or other cardio machine, so the phone is a fair distance away from my eyes.

A feature I wish they would add in the future is increased robustness of the conversations. Instead of teaching us exactly one perfectly scripted conversation, teach us variations. Most of the time there are a handful of different ways someone could say the same thing, so even if the conversation is relatively simple in content, learning just one specific tightly scripted conversation is going to be pretty useless once you step out into the real world.

Overall, Rocket Chinese is founded on good ideas and has solid potential, I hope it will strive to improve and live up to the potential I see.

If you are looking to learn to speak a language, especially without living in the country, this software makes it easy. Rather than memorizing words all day and getting bored, this software keeps you interested and gets you speaking quickly!

Rocket languages make it fun to learn. The way the course is interactive makes learning new vocabulary very easy. I listen to the lessons while I am walking or on the subway. It has helped me get the basics for surviving in China. The only improvement I would suggest is that the app is made available offline. In China, the app sometimes will only work with a VPN turned on. I would fully recommend Rocket to anyone wanting to learn a language. It has more than helped me.

There are many good tools to practice Chinese. I really like the rocket record where you can compare the pronunciation with Chinese speaking people. The only thing that I am missing is that there should be a prepared vocabulary for each chapter.

I am just restarting to learn Mandarin using Rocket Chinese because I had been too busy teaching and building new courses at my current school in China.

Positive:
1. Listening, Reading (in pinyin - latin script and Simplified - chinese script), Writing (initially in pinyin) and speaking is available from the very first lesson.
2. Step by step in a logical fashion based on what would seem to be logical needs of a person new to learning the language.
3. Clear and colourful interface that is easy to follow.
4. There are now cute little incentive badges that give you a sense of your progress. These complement the already colourful interface, but I think this is helpful for both younger and older learners

While I like the course layout very much, there are just a couple of tiny problems that I suspect will be addressed quite quickly on the technical side.

1. I haven't yet figured out how to prevent my browser (Firefox) from asking permission everytime RocketChinese wants to use the camera/microphone. Because I am used to the 7/24 customer service, email is obviously slower, but their responses are usually within 24 hours... so, not intolerable.
2.

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