Find out what actual users have to say about our courses through their Rocket Languages reviews.
I have found Rocket Japanese to be useful, and frustrating in about equal measures. The voice-recognition is a great idea in helping perfect your pronunciation. Unfortunately I find that about 20% of the time (I haven't kept a count, this is a rough estimate) it simply doesn't work. Either your phrase is not recognised, or deemed incorrect. As a beginner, not knowing if it is you, or the software that is the problem can be insanely frustrating. It doesn't appear to be the longer sentences that suffer from this. The very first sounds we are asked to repeat are riddled with examples. After 3 months it still tells me I can't pronounce 'ka'.
I have finally been prompted to write this because the system tells me I cannot pronounce 'America jin' correctly. Clearly this is an almost native sound to an English speaker, but I mimic the example exactly to no avail. I can forgive these issues, although there are other minor complaints. I have also reported some mistakes in the text, but they remain unchanged. Personally I find that the audio lessons are rather childish, and would be happier if we just got on with the lesson, but I recognise that might just be me being grumpy.
Response from Rocket Languages
Response from Rocket Languages: Hi Andrew, thanks for the detailed feedback. Unfortunately, very short words tend not to work very well with voice recognition as they don't have a lot of context. With regards the lessons themselves, we are in the process of completely redoing the Language & Culture lessons and hope to have those up in the next couple of months. Unfortunately, the pandemic has put a halt to a lot of our activities.
I have a Macbook pro OS Catalina 10.15.4, Firefox, AND NO I do NOT want to use Chrome, Level 1, Rocket Languages Lesson 5.9, Activity:Hear it - Say it = while clicking on the "Play" button I cannot hear what I am supposed to record. Even after recording something I cannot hear what I recorded. While at the same time the activity "Flash Cards" as well as the activity "Write It" and the activity "Know It" is working perfectly fine. Therefore it can only be a bug in your software at this point in the activity "Hear It - Say It”. After trying Chrome it did not work either.
There are obviously ongoing problems with the audio since 2019 as seen on other comments (now while I was doing the certification in Module 5) ) and no one seems to be able or willing to take car of these issues. I am extremely disappointed.
Response from Rocket Languages
Response from Rocket Languages: Hi Gerd, Lesson 5.9 has been fixed. With the new update some of the phraseboxes in that lesson stopped working as they should. Also, if you are using a Mac then we would recommend the Safari browser. Firefox does not support voice recognition. Firefox has said that it is coming but they have been saying that for 5 years!
I think the course is very well structured and easy to follow. Speakers Nik and Paul are very nice. Recommended !
Rocket Languages really inspired that everyone can learn a different language always.
i am so glad that i find this apps in the googgle because i learn alot about my study and this a big help for the bigenners. to understand.
Inconsistent and confusing !
The progression of difficulty in lessons is VERY problematic and not well though !
Sudden long chains of complex unknown words that you have to repeat during the gap which is often too short for long sentences even when you know them by heart.
Followed by obvious 2-word sentences you have seen and heard 5 times already.
Then back to a complex sentence filled with new words.
And not so much audio content in between.
Too expensive for that kind of inconsistency.
Response from Rocket Languages
Response from Rocket Languages: Hi Iza - Unlike some more popular languages, there is no set way of learning Hindi (everyone seems to have a different opinion on how it could/should be done). It probably has to do with it being a dialect, which means there isn't necessarily a lot of uniformity when it comes to some words and phrases. We revamped Rocket Hindi at the start of 2020 and I feel that it is one of the best Hindi courses that you will find.
Je suis tres content avec le course francais, mais cette ce le commence. Je adore apprendre langues et Je espere parler et ecouter tres bien le francais.
A bientot
Decent program, the voice recording and speak detection leaves a lot to be desired but atleast it gets you to speak. My main issue is with the module tests at the end of the lessons, they crash and reset the entire test once you get to the end of a section. It is not worth doing.
Response from Rocket Languages
Response from Rocket Languages: Hi Brian - We sent you an email asking for more clarification on the Module Tests issue. We haven't had any other reports of issues with this so would be keen to get to the bottom of it.
The fact that Keni and Sayaka, native Japanese, do the speaking, and then Sarah, an American, does the explaining, is quite helpful as it allows for you hear what it would sound when spoken by a native, but it is easier to understand when being explained. I am pretty happy with it so far, albeit I haven't really gotten that far in. I purchased all 3 lessons so I sure as hell hope its good all the way through! There seems to be around 200 lessons I have to get through, so it will certainly keep me occupied for a while. Here are my two complaints, I hope these are fixed in the future because I think it would truly be a nearly perfect language learning course after that:
#1. I think a lot of us have this issue. The microphone does not work well, even with headphones. It's often with shorter words, and I understand that's simply because shorter words are harder to pick up with speech recognition. Albeit, when the internet is slow, none of them work.
#2: This is the most important: what would be extremely helpful is text documents going into greater depth on grammar and structure. I know that we're sort of supposed to learn that long the way, but at the beginning you are left feeling sort of lost, and we will have to learn these rules at some point. Having a reference point to study up on would be infinitely helpful in terms of grammar. And this wouldn't even require much, I do not think--perhaps a PDF a few pages long telling the basic rules of Japanese.
Response from Rocket Languages
Response from Rocket Languages: Hi Aldrich - Thanks for your review. We are actually at the start of a project to completely redo the Rocket Japanese Language lessons so that they are far more closely aligned with the JLPT structure. We hope to have the Level 1 of these new lessons out within a couple of months. At the same time we will be looking at the voice recognition examples and making those better if need be.
So far level 1 of Rocket Italian is pretty easy. Spanish is my native language. My only concern is if the later modules will go more in depth into Italian slang (depending on region). From personal experience I find that most people who learn Spanish later in life use terminology that native speakers don't use. Or don't understand "improper" Spanish. Also out of curiosity, have you guys considered offering a rated-R version of Rocket language learning? Lol