Rocket Languages Reviews

So far (I am only on Lesson 1.3) the experience is good. The conversation is applicable to everyday life - and I am looking forward to using these phrases, as they stick in my head and on my tongue, next week on a business trip to Paris. I need to keep practicing saying the phrases, and comparing my pronunciation and word rhythm with the recordings.

I love how we can practice conversations! ITS SO COOL im only 13 But rocket languages has taught me so much japanese!... I wish it was free then other people would go on it too , I was sad when my 7 day trial was over :'( BUT I LOVE ROCKET LANGUAGES. One day its my dream to go to japan and maybe even live there. So i want to become fluent in japanese. I use so many apps like youtube and duolingo But this is my favorite!!! I just wish it was free like those two apps thx for being amazing
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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.)

Excellent lessons and drills to make sure you hear, pronounce, and write the language correctly. I like how you learn through phrases, not just verb conjugations. Good info about culture makes it more interesting. Although this costs way more than Duolingo (which is free), the price is a bargain for the easy-to-navigate and well-structured interface. The only negative is one night I had trouble with the website; it was showing primitive html (yes, I had the most recent Chrome browser). Customer service responded to my email for help five days later. By then, the issue had resolved. But my streak and ranking suffered.

Still learning about how to use the app. It seems to work well on my Android phone, and voice recognition does not work on my iPad. I wish I could explore more alternate words and phrases that seem commonly used...according toSpanish speakers I attempt to engage.

I love the dialogues. They help you develop your listening and speaking skills rocket fast. Unlike the Pilmsleur approach that I have also used, Rocket languages also has the reinforcement activities where you get additional listening, speaking and writing practice so you learn to spell correctly and pay attention to accent marks and special characters.
I am giving it a 4 out of 5 because in my opinion the price is pretty steep (I can get the Pilmsleur CDs for Portuguese level 1 for $34 in ebay) and I feel for that price it should also include some grammar videos with activities and reading comprehension to make it more well rounded.

While I am enjoying, and learning from Rocket language I have two major gripes. 1) Many of the conversations are between to native English speakers who do not pronounce like native Germans (Which is the goal of language learning) and the audio "lesson" can get rather tedious and forced sounding. 2) On many of the conversations, when you "play as..." if the person laughs, moans, chuckles, or makes other noncommittal noises, you still must sound exactly like they do to pass that section, even though I can intentionally mispronounce words in hard mode and it will pass me to the next section otherwise.

I like this program a great deal. It's very well structured and pragmatic. My only true complaint is the voice recognition software. I live in France and if most of the French can understand me then why doesn't the program recognize my voice?

I like the way it focuses on the parts of a common conversation. Things that it could do better:
1. Make some games or reading lessons that you can do silently. Face it: a lot of us have time to study in places that we just don't want to be talking into a microphone.
2. Have your web app work with more than just Chrome.

Other than those two items, it is a great platform to learn a language on. I would recommend it over most others.

Having completed the Level 1 Japanese course I feel confident saying that is a great value for the price. This is a solid course that does a good job of teaching basic grammar, vocabulary, and the hiragana and katakana writing systems. A decent amount of practice material is provided as well. My only major complaint is that the voice recognition software used to grade pronunciation is not reliable, which can be frustrating as it is used for graded assignments. However the course is constantly being improved and I believe it's only a matter of time before that final wrinkle gets ironed out. Even if it doesn't, this is still a great place to start learning the Japanese language.