Rocket French Reviews

The interface is excellent, and the lesson design is excellent. I've tried Rosetta Stone and another program before, and I find Rocket French far better.

The voice recognition, however, is lame. Short words are near impossible. My accent is doubtless awful, but I can mutter a vulgar epithet and get 25%, whereas it will tell me, "Sorry, I didn't get that" on repeat efforts at "gros." This feature sorely needs work.

I am learning Rocket French and i do enjoy listening to the audio lessons in the car.. My only criticism is that i wish there were more audio lessons. Also the quiz section for the language and culture lessons are frustrating, it only tests you on the words/sentences that are listed and maybe should be testing more on the actual theory behind the subject. Also some of the audio lessons are surprisingly sexist? maybe due for an update to bring into 2018 Rocket??!

I am enjoying the audio lessons and I particularly like the additional explanations on grammar points and the way they ask you to apply the learning in different ways. It would be great if this learning approach was also applied to the revision exercises, which do a good job of consolidating the phrases in the audio lesson (even if it is a little too repetitive) but don't stretch you to apply the underlying grammar principles to new situations. It would also be good if the revision sometimes threw in words and phrases from earlier lessons as a way of consolidating what you have learned before. I also find the voice recognition very difficult to use. It very often doesn't pick up on what I'm saying.

So far (I am only on Lesson 1.3) the experience is good. The conversation is applicable to everyday life - and I am looking forward to using these phrases, as they stick in my head and on my tongue, next week on a business trip to Paris. I need to keep practicing saying the phrases, and comparing my pronunciation and word rhythm with the recordings.

I bought the French language version. Very good. I don't know about the other courses but I have a couple of reasons for not giving it a 5 star rating: 1. The pronunciation of the female speaker in the early lessons is often bad. She has a habit of not pronouncing the nasal "n" in the middle of words or in liaison word combinations. Consequently I use Google translate to learn and practice the pronunciation of these words. Google has a fast and slow mode which is also helpful but no male speaker option. Forvo pronunciation does but is limited in available styles. The best I've found is Acapela which has a choice of male, female, France French, Belgium French, Canadian French, emotive, flat, etc, but no speed option. The good thing is that the voice recognition system does recognize the pronunciation I use from Google etc. If I copy the speaker in the Rocket Language course when she uses words with "n" in the middle ( e.g. vingt, prendre, or combinations like "pas inquitez") it doesn't recognize them. NOTE, I am a native English speaker fluent in Chinese and Japanese. I have had many hours in language labs learning unfamiliar sounds.

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I especially like the dialogue format, dismantling its parts, then putting all together. It is helping fix phrases in my mind that I used to have to piece together mechanically. I am hoping that this will lead to more fluid conversational skill. This is going beyond simple listening comprehension.

I used Pimsleur courses before. This is equally as good, but I am using exclusively in a car. The Pimsleur is better in a car as the lessons automatically come on to the next lesson and the program keeps track of where you are and Apple CarPlay controls work better than Rockets. The arocketvwoukd be better if it were seamless to a CarPlay experience. Also the review words should keep repeating in several lessons to make it easier to remember, rather than only one review time in the following lesson. Multiple repeats help sear it in my brain. For these reasons, Pimsleur works better for me.

Moderators Note: Thanks for the feedback, Ivan. You can use Rocket courses in a similar way by using the iOS app, downloading the Interactive Audio lessons to your app for offline usage, and then playing those sequentially. I hope that helps. All the best from the Rocket Languages team.

Sorry, it is too early for me to give you a review of your course.
Can I use Whatsapp instead of opening the ​computer to view your course?

I am not sure I would buy it again, and I am not sure .......

I have only just started the course which is fine so far. My criticism would be that it does not reflect the way people talk in France. No one has ever said salut to me and the standard greeting is bonjour

I would like to see something in Rocket Languages to drive a logical conversation (live person or AI) where user needs to respond to questions but without assistance and the program would validate the response (either written or audio). The expected responses would have been covered in the prior lessons. As nobody in the language software community does this yet, it would be awesome for Rocket Languages to pick it up. You could always start simple with just a standard conversation flow of questions to elicit the expected responses. You currently do that but to only a minor extent.