Rocket French Reviews

Pros:

The reinforcement of the Hear it, Say It, Write it and Know it activities.
The flash cards - and the ability to customize your flashcards.
Learning phrases as opposed to just vocabulary
The point, progress and streak information.
The Rocket Fuel emails are very helpful.

Cons:
I could locate only one pronunciation lesson. It would be help to have more. (Note: that lessons indicates that there is further help included in lesson 3.6, but that doesn't appear to be a pronunciation lesson.)
Some of the audio, done by the native speaker, is unclear. Either the first portion of the audio is cut short, or there is lack of clarity in the audio.

Because of the clarity issues of the audio, I become quickly frustrated. I've verified that the issue is with the audio itself by trying a headset and bluetooth speakers, comparing them with other audios. Unfortunatly, this single issue is my reason for cancellation. :(

The program keeps locking up on me. I am frustrated. Halfway through the pronunciation part I click the red microphone icon for the current word and it doesn't respond. And at that point I can't get the program to do anything. I have no opinion on the Customer Service as I haven't used it yet.

Some days it is good, other days voice and speech recognition is plain atrocious and frustrating. Whole phrases 'not heard', words (or numbers) plucked out of nowhere that bear no resemblance to what was said. And this on a high speed internet connection. That wouldn't be half as frustrating come each time with a useless pop-up on what to do. Will I keep using it - yes. Can it be useful - yes. Does its voice recognition engine need to be improved - YES.

A good learning tool.
I'm not happy with the audio it's not working 100%. On average each lesson has 5% faulty audio.
I have complained but the advice is not working, because the fault is in the app it's selves.
The only thing I can do is ignore the gaps and hope.....

The combination of the online tools and the ability to listen to the lessons whilst doing other things provides a really powerful learning combination. I particularly value the ability to watch and listen to my own attempts and compare them with a good French speaker!

I am a visual learner,
so I need a visual phonetic interpretation of the language
before I can pronounce it.
Unfortunately,
Rocket Language only does this to my pronunciation attempt.

Overall, I think the Rocket French folks have developed a pretty good system to learn French, so I won't go into detail about the things that I like. The big downside, however, is how their system tracks how far you've progressed in each module. For example, I just finished module 3.9, and the icons have changed from no color to the following colors and comments:

FLASHCARDS = ORANGE (GOOD)
HEAR-IT = ORANGE (GOOD)
WRITE-IT = ORANGE (GOOD)
KNOW-IT = ORANGE (GOOD)
QUIZ = GREEN (EASY)

That is not sufficient. What I want (and need) to know is how often I have reviewed each module and how I have done each time. So I have created an offline spreadsheet that shows the following for each section that I have studied. For example here is how I have tracked section 3.4 that I have reviewed several times and self-graded:

11/8/22 = D, 11/9/22 = C, 11/20/22 = C, 11/23/22 = B

You can see that first studied this module on 11/8/22, and then reviewed is subsequently three times, and my self-grade has improved from the initial D to a B. And, instead of a self-grade, I would much prefer to see the percentage of answers I got right.

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As most people say the speech recognition, whether if I use a wired microphone, airpods or powerbeats, Rocket does not work consistently when speaking. My girlfriend got so frustrated that she went back to Duolingo. I am using chrome and it is up to date. Rocket is good but if you cannot practice speech then it is subpar. This problem is common in the the comments so why can't it be rectified???

The system itself is very powerful and comprehensive. It would be really enjoyable.. if it worked.
The voice recognition software, which is the heart of the system, won't work most of the times.
At first I put it down to my bad pronunciation as I am using top-notch technology. As my pronunciation skills got better I could see no improvements. At this point I tried feeding the audio from the Rocket French app itself to my laptop through microphone. Incredibly enough IT WOULDN'T PICK IT UP or would show accuracy at 50-75%!
This is frustrating, because I am eager to learn but I lost my initial enthusiasm. Sometimes I get stuck to the same word for minutes with no 100% pronunciation accuracy.
For 263 euros I was expecting better software development.
Very disappointed.

The course is effective and I am making progress, but the voice recognition software is very glitchy and inconsistent.