Rocket Languages Reviews

I rely on seeing the words as well as hearing them. This is integrated throughout. I enjoy immediately learning to pronounce the words and spell the words correctly. It is fun and interactive throughout.

I have completed 4 lessons so far. My experience has been good. I like the pace and length of the lessons. I am looking forward to continuing to build on my experience.

It says to write something awesome about Rocket languages. I can't. The voice recognition is absolutely terrible. I have changed the setting from default, to "Easy" and to "Hard", and it still doesn't recognise half of what I say. I can't complete the exercises properly because it fails to recognise most speech. It marks me down. It is REALLY slowing down my progress. I have tried: emphasising words with clear enunciation, speaking louder and softer, and speaking slowly. Still most of the time, even with simple words like "soy" and "doctor" it interprets them a something completely and randomly different, even with vowel sounds that aren't in the words. The rest of the time I just get the message that it "didn't catch that". I don't have a speech impediment. So should this review really give such low grading JUST because of one thing, the speech recognition? Yes, because the speech recognition is used in about 80% of the course sections.

it is actually very good at reinforcing grammar and pronunciation. The cultural component is not that strong, but at least it is introduced. I am at the intermediate level, so it took me a while to figure out where to start. Regular tests would help me evaluate how well I have learned to make sure I am working at the right level or if I need to go back to some beginning lessons. I am always concerned I might have missed something important at the beginner level. (Maybe I am missing a feature that is already there). I use it along with quizlet to help memorize vocabulary and conjugations.

Unfortunately, the lessons in Level 2 are not as well done as Level 1. There is little value in attempting to repeat long directions (as in Lesson 8.4). It would be much more helpful to have us repeat short directions: turn left, turn right, make a U turn, go straight ahead, for example. Or, better yet, put the English down (Go to this street, turn left onto that street, make a U turn, etc.) and have us translate it into Italian, with the correct Italian phrase afterwards.

Useful and thorough course. Easy to use and straightforward interface.

I like the program setup for double checking the phrases. My biggest difficulty is thinking in French while learning Spanish. French is easier for me.

I am enjoying journey this time around. Thank you for the support email. Seeing that every week helped me to get back to course.
Regards
Jan L

I've only been studying for two weeks, but so far I'm cautiously optimistic. I like the reinforcement exercises and hope they continue. Review, practice, reinforcement, and generalization are so important for language learning and these conditions of good learning seem to be built into the program so far. I'm a little turned off by the chattiness of the two conversants but that's just me.

Wonderful teaching: but a little too fast for start...Thank You Joy