Rocket Languages Reviews

I'm currently using Rocket Languages to learn more Chinese. I live in China right now and what I really enjoy about these lessons is that they are immediately applicable. I studied for 30 minutes yesterday and immediately had new vocabulary to use with my Chinese friends. I'm feeling quite positive about this language course.

I was impulsive when I bought Rocket Chinese but I definitely do not regret it because my Mandarin has improved so much in these few months where I can strike up some everyday conversations with my family. But I must disclose that though I have improved a lot these few months, it is not solely due to this program. I can speak Cantonese fluently so I can easily understand the Chinese grammar as I have been exposed to it and I can get immediate feedback from my mom whom speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin. I like how I can teach myself at my own pace without needing to travel to a class to learn. I like the overall format of listening and the ability to speak and have it rated based on how well I do. There are some technical issues that can be fixed but the experience is certainly very enjoyable and it is very fun! The only downside is there is no one that can immediately fix your pronunciation because as mentioned, the rated recordings of our voice does have faults as it may not pick it up when you pronounce a word correctly or incorrectly. This program does help tremendously in terms of improving my vocabulary and help to build my own sentences. This program really got the ball rolling for me and hopefully in the near future I can converse fully in Mandarin.

I am currently living in China and can immediately apply the newly learnt material. The best thing about this course is the ability to speak and have it rated afterwards. I feel my pronunciation has already improved and I feel more confident to speak or ask questions. I hope in the near future, I am able to follow and have a full conversation in Mandarin. The only thing I regret is not having found this course earlier!

I have used Rocket Language course in the Past. It is found to be very useful. At present, I am using Rocket Chinese. My Spouse has started learning using a Rocket German Course.
I have no reservation in recommending Rocket Language courses to my relatives and friends.
The course at present is Audio. I suggest Rocket Languages to introduce Video Courses.

I'm moving to China next year and had no knowledge of chinese, didn't know where to start, so Rocket Chinese was very useful for me a start to my learning path. Learning the language takes everyday practice and this site allows to do just that. I was plesantly surprised with level of exercises, I didn't think an online course would give me a chance to pratice spelling and writing.

Even if you want to take live lessons, I highly recommend to start with Rocket Chinese and use live lessons as supplementary materials later, once you've grasped the basics. Will save you lots of time and money! I highly recommend Rocket Chinese (and other Rocket Languages, I've also tried Rocket Spanish) for all you beginner learners like me.

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.

So far I am really enjoying the Rocket program for Chinese. I think if I had chosen any other language to study my progress would be much faster, but with the Chinese I am going slowly because I am trying to learn the characters at the same time as the spoken language. So I don't proceed to the next lesson until I can comfortably write the characters. I learn the spoken phrases quickly, but the written characters come more slowly. It feels almost I am learning two languages at the same time. I don't know if I am supposed to concentrate so much on the writing, and maybe I should progress faster through the audio. I'm not even sure there is a right way to do it. But anyway, I am having fun with it, and I am glad I bought it.

Couldn't be happier with the Chinese course I recently bought. Only got it a few days ago, but I've sunk hours and hours into it... it's surprisingly engaging and I'm normally not so studious. And a big shout-out to Margaret, the CSR who helped me with an issue earlier. Honestly her customer service was the stimulus that brought me to the reviews page.

Well designed course that combines visual, audio, written, quizzes, flash cards and reminders along with a little humour. It's a very well designed program.

The online computer version has an advantage. It records your spoken phrases so you can play them back to compare pronunciation with the native speaker. This is great! The iPhone version lacks that feature. It grades your spoken response but you can't hear your spoken response.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the educational design and the usefulness of Rocket Chinese. Very well done! I used both the computer and my iPhone for practice. I like both versions. It's the best language learning course I've seen, by far.

The Rocket Chinese course is comprehensive and contains a good variety of tools. There are a couple negatives though. The main one is that the male voice actor's pronunciation is not very good. That's a huge drawback when you're trying to learn to pronounce a language correctly. Offline use on Android is fairly minimal. It's painful to enter pinyin for exercises that use it, for instance you can't just enter dan1cheng2, you need to find a way to enter dānchéng. Some odd vocabulary items are introduced early, like "go dutch" or "seat belts". It would be nice to have some additional drills and reading material. Overall though, if they could replace the male voice (or he could improve his pronunciation and cadence) it would be a very good course. (I haven't used their customer service so I'm giving the benefit of the doubt with 5 stars.)