Rocket French Reviews

Rocket French seems to be doing well teaching me introductory french. It is very in depth compared to the free resources for learning french out there. Sometimes the audio lessons have a little too much chit chat for my liking, but on the positive side it follows an amusing story and often explains the new words and phrases well. Not a huge fan of the vocal recognition exercises as they are not always accurate. Overall, happy with my purchase and already feeling much more confident about my french skills!

Rocket Languages has presented itself as useful so far. I would recommend the interactive course for someone who's above the beginner level to avoid struggles and discouragements at first. The speakers really push you forward into speaking, though. However, it gets tricky when you have to use an intermediary language to learn the target one. The possibility of downloading everything in the course has provided a deeper immersion in French once you can carry it around whenever you go. Plus, the audio quality is crystal clear providing a better understanding of how the pronunciation works separately and in context.

On the plus side, it's the only course that focuses on talking, which makes it great. I like the exercises where it records your voice so that you can quickly compare your prononciation with the native one.

The audio lessons are presented very well. They are by far the best part of the program. The written tests and multiple choice tests work fine. The interactive voice tests are sometimes glitchy. As others have said, the website and iOS app can sometimes have issues. The iOS app is not as quite as fully functional as the website, but still pretty good. Overall, I'm happy with the program. I suspect it will continue to get better with time. I'm not disappointed with my purchase.

The way it explains the language is very nice for a beginning student. The conversations are nicely spelled out and the speaking of the people is easily understood. The conversations are also spoken slowly so it is easy to understand and it isn't overwhelming. My daughter enjoys the application and hopes it will help her in french class this year in school.

I tried learning French using a CD set and books, but found the process slow and inflexible. With RF, I am able to vary the pace of learning and really focus on pronunciation. I also like the different forms of learning offered and the mix between conversational French and grammar. Well done on a great product!

Please can you let me know how I can use the keyboard in the "Write It" section? I am able to type some of the accents, but others are less obvious? Perhaps there are keystroke sequences that I need to learn?

Kind Regards
Murray Saunderson

Overall, Rocket French is a solid product for beginners like me who are starting to learn French. The interactive audio lessons are well constructed, and with the various assessment tools the overall learning experience is more than what you would typically expect from an online offering. The quality of the lessons are somewhat similar to the ones from a private tutor. Even though the price for all 3 levels combined is on the higher end, I've found it to be well worth the money. I would recommend this to a French learner!

On the plus side:
• I like the way grammatical rules are discussed in understandable, laymans’ terms
• It’s easy to learn/revise words and phrases
• It’s easy to develop your listening skills to understand what people are saying and its easy to develop skills in identifying what to say

But there is room for improvement:
• Speech recognition needs improvement
o Gives some poor pronunciation 100%, but doesn’t recognise closer attempts
o When sentences are long it often cuts you off
o Often (every session) crashes for no reason and you have to log in again
• Its easy to put all your effort into reading and writing – rather than developing listening and speaking skills

Awesome?
Well, we do not like Paul's condescending and patronizing manner (it's not funny). We are both teachers, and we were hoping for more professionalism.
My husband and I are going through the lessons together, and we feel the lesson content is practical and appropriate. We feel we are learning a lot to use in everyday situations.
Bon Chance!

To date I have purchased two modules for Rocket French and Rocket Italian. I found RF while it was in it's infancy because at the time of purchase only Premium Level One was available. A few months later I received an email about Rocket French Level Two and I jumped to add it. Then a short time later I received the announcement about Rocket Italian. To date I have only used the RF. I use it in conjunction with two other pieces of software. One of them is Duolingo. However, what I like about RF is that it is more thorough. I like the two speakers/hosts of the program as well. Paul with his English charm and Marie Claire with her lovely, French personality. The two make each lesson fun and entertaining. So far I have made good progress with RF but I have one gripe. The voice recognition needs more work. I use a headset that works well with other voice recognition programs but RF doesn't always recognize the sentence as I repeat it. And this is frustrating when you play or hear Paul or Marie-Claire pronounce the sentence as you just recorded. This is the one major issue I have. Well this and the fact that I get nagging messages if I try to use a browser other than Google Chrome or Chromium. Overall, I do like the program and have made more progress with my French when I come here than anywhere else. Thanks for a quality product.