Rocket Languages Reviews

I studied some German in high school 55 years ago. I’ve tried several other well known and well advertised and more expensive language courses in the past, but I am most impressed with Rocket for it’s pacing and through attention to understanding the context in real life situations. I’ve been using it for a week and look forward to each days lesson.

Sehr Gut! I like the Listening and Speaking aspect, from the start... I love the explanations of the word parts. Why is Wie geht's dir.... in that form. Nice! I like the hear, speak, record, listen, compare.. Nice. I really like the classical Musik (-Brahms- Bach?) in the Introduction. It is the little 'polished' things, nice touches to begin our solid feeling journey. So much better than Duolingo, (even tho they do very boringly pound things in with shear repetition). I am trying Memrise as well, for what it does, it is fun, but not as systematic or complete as the foundation is in Rocket Languages - German. Prost!

First of all, In the middle of exercises (as I'm trying to speak a German phrase) I get annoying popup windows asking me to write a review of Rocket German. I think that's pretty indicative of how much Rocket cares about me actually learning, an how much it just wants more business. In fact, just above this box where I'm typing, Rocket has a link to some "example reviews" which are glowing reports of how when you buy RG, all your wildest fantasies will come true. Since RG insists, though, here is my review...***

Right after I paid $250 dollars for the three German courses (the first of which I didn't even want, but you have no option to remove it from the bundle) I get directed to another page telling me I should really also buy another add-on course that normally costs $50, but they're going to give it to me for $30. Classic used-car salesman tactic. I decline. I'm directed to another page saying "Ok, we'll give it to you for $20, but only if you buy it right now. No kidding, this is your last chance!" Does it get any more sleazy than that?***

The German course was clearly written by native German speakers, which is good, but not really checked by a native English speaker for the quality of the English dialogue.

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Since I originally purchased Rocket German there has been two revisions. I'm glad to see that the program gets updated. I like the current format. With the previous update I noticed a significant improvement in the voice recognition. With the latest version, I think that some of that recognition is not quite as good. At mid-day it seems that the voice recognition has a difficult time. I'm sure that the voice recognition id very difficult to accomplish. (fyi. I use headphones with a mic and no background noise). Over the past few years, I've taken in-class and on-line German classes and used a couple of apps, but come back to Rocket German as my preference (although teacher instructed course covered sentence structure and verb conjugation).

I really like the friendly and natural tone of the interactive audio lessons, and how new vocabulary and grammar are introduced.

I wish there were a chart showing a picture or a drawing of badges. I get new badges fairly often. It is announce only once. I really have no idea what my status is!
It is not clear how thge stars work. Are whit stars good?

But I still enjoy the course. I am "hooked" on it!

Tschuess

The nice thing about the course is that I can repeat over and over the phrases and words. I tend not to go overboard with perfection, but my German friend tells me that I'm getting better and sometimes corrects the structure and pronunciation. I talk about easy stuff, nothing too complicated. It's Ok, I'm happy with the progress, thank you. Leo

Voice Recognition is poor.
Especially small words & words starting with letter "S" !!

I like the self paced aspect. You can listen and repeat words and phrases as often as needed.

I appreciate the explanations of subtle points and progression of exercises (Hear it/Say it, write it, learn it, etc) to develop and expand my memory and understanding.