Rocket Languages Reviews

Well thought out program. The chunking technique is brilliant and the downloadable .mp3 files are perfect for my commute in the car. I expect the program will be very effective in my learning French!

I've just started the first few lessons and I really like the conversational approach to learning and the additional form of testing that follows. Unlike other learning platforms that I've tried that encourage you to speak, Rocket's approach of using voice recognition makes it into a kind of game where you feel that speaking correctly matters. I also love how you can stand in for one of the speakers in a pseudo-realtime conversation. It feels that one step closer to learning with another person. On the negative side, I find the male teacher to be a bit too 'smily', like he is talking to children. This isn't especially off-putting when we get to the actual conversations and explanations but it doesn't really help with learning. I guess they wanted the male and female teachers to have some kind of rapport with the students but it feels forced.

Great program. I like the flow of the modules and the flexibility the mobile app offers. The only issue I have is that the voice recognition is a little finicky. It will give 100% sometimes even though I clearly mispronounced or even left a word out. It will also fail to recognize a word in one sentence but then pick it up in others.

the excercises are less,even too simple. Every single charpter is well,like order menu,book room,Say,the price is satisfing each one,and I hope it can open to everyone for free,that's exciting, or make some easy games or Words Puzzle; whatever it like , it make learner more keen to learning, and make a better memory,learn all word and prase by heart.

Great so far. It treats you more like an adult than Rosetta Stone. I never liked the one-sided approach in Rosetta Stone that I had to guess at what they were trying to teach you from 4 pictures rather than just telling you some basic concepts as well as some of the culture. It looks like I will get that with Rocket Languages but didn't with Rosetta Stone. So, Rocket Languages treats you like an adult. Reasonably priced.

Awesome, provided an easy way to learn reading, writing and listening Japanese language.

I've been using Rocket for the past month along with a couple other language programs (Pimsleur, transparent, Duolingo, and Memrise) to boost my learning of Portuguese. Overall, I really like Rocket. The ability to download the audio is a big help as I commute a lot. The audio training is not as in depth as Pimsleur, but it is very good. The variety of lessons and the ability to jump around is great. The leader board helps to provide incentive to keep practicing which helps. Also, the entire program is very well rounded.

I sometimes have trouble with the record audio but it works most of the time. It is nice to be able to hear your own voice and compare to the teachers for accuracy. My biggest complaint with Rocket Portuguese is with the male speaker (Paulo). His pronunciation of words ending in "s" has a very harsh "sh" sound which is completely different from the female teacher and every other audio teacher I have heard. Words like "Bem vindos" which has a soft "os" ending are pronounced like "Bem vindoosh". I can understand that Paulo may be from a different part of Brazil and perhaps it is pronounced that way there. However, when every other teacher pronounces it with a soft ending you want to practice and mimmic the right way.

Overall, this is a great program and I plan on becoming conversationally fluent with Portuguese with Rocket's help.

I think the Rocket format is a solid tool for learning - especially for beginners. Each lesson is a conversation between two people that you study and use to learn vocabulary and grammar. I always enjoyed that the format gave me little "stories" I could grab on to as memory aids. It really gave me a great start.

As my enthusiasm waned, as it always will when learning something new and moving past the beginner phase, I found that the rocket format started to bog me down a little. Some lessons would have over 60 phrases to practice and memorize. I'd get bogged down trying to get through the homework. I felt my learning speed was slowing down as I entered Level 2 of the course, and I began to turn to other tools like "Spanish Dict (spanishdict.com)" to augment the material and speed me up.

I think the course could be improved drastically in three ways.

1) Shorten Lessons. People like to move through lessons quickly. It produces a sense of accomplishment. This means, reducing the number of phrases to be mastered in each lesson.

2) Enhance Memorization Tools. There are well known systems for reviewing words and the idea of building a deck of flashcards you can continuously review is missing from the toolkit of Rocket Spanish.

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It is fun to learn French pronunciation and more about the grammar. I also think it is good for my seventy-six-year-old brain to try this new exercise!

Pros:
+good quality audio and content
+many different exercises to practice
+audio recognition exercises
+daily rank is very motivating

Cons:
-pricing is high due to exchange rate (PLN/USD)
-Mobile app UI (android) is not well designed (too small icons; far away buttons; a lot empty space; hand becomes quickly tiered from jumping from record icon to easy/medium/hard button)
-a little too much English in recordings

Ideas:
-bigger buttons; small mobile app redesign
-access to recording transcript (more than just one sentence at a time)
-accumulation of all flashcards and other exercise into one big place to exercise what I already should know;