Rocket Languages Reviews

Nothing "awesome" to say. I thought you wanted my honest, candid feedback. Still waiting for help on the problem of inserting special characters in the writing practice section of lessons. Rocket told me I must wait two to four days.

I get the impression Rocket also doesn't teach grammar either—at least not overtly. Disappointing.

What's your return policy?

I can't. you won't let the honest responses be submitted. there is nothing awesome about your program. Neither, do you respond in a timely manner to concerns. So if you want honest then let them be submitted

I was astonished by the sexism and gender stereotypes, there were even lessons about the nativity. I wanted to share these lessons with my partner, who is more advanced than me, but I was too embarrassed, and some lessons were unlistenable for me, due to these problems.

Also, the lessons themselves tend to just ask you to repeat what you have heard, and only occasionally challenge the listener to take what they've learned in the lesson an actually apply it to make new sentences.

On a positive note I was pleased that the instructors would often add multiple ways of saying things.

My review is of Rocket Languages Sign Language. Someone who is just beginning to learn sign language has no hope of following your lessons because you sign too fast. Much too fast!

It's okay to have a fast version, as long as a slow version is included. Someone who is just beginning to learn ASL can't follow when your hands move that fast.

You need to fix this.

The program--either on desktop or tablet, often does not record my voice, and thus does not record portions of lessons. This is not getting better. Until Rocked Languages can improve its server, I'd advise avoiding the program.

Very good set up and structure. However, my main complaint is that the conversations never really got increasingly complicated. Additionally, they did not include too wide a range of vocabulary. The audio is great for learning pronunciation but I feel like I spent a lot of time and did not learn as much as I could have say, through duolingo which is free. I would only recommend this program to people who have never studied a language before because it goes slow enough that it may be beneficial to get over the initial fears of learning a language. However, for people such as myself with a more developed linguistic background, I felt as if the dialogues did not advance very much and that I did not really leave learning as much as I could have if I spent the same amount of time with other resources.

I feel as if Rocket Languages needs to drastically alter the content of the dialogues to better suit them for "intuitive" grammar and vocabulary acquisition. That being said, the main structuring of the program I found to be fantastic and the native audio files also were superb.

It is very frustrating that I cannot offline download the lessons in the app itself on my iPhone. It would have been better that way. I want to be able to use it in the car that way. I know you can download it through iTunes, but that is too cumbersome.

I would recommend Rocket Languages if you are a complete beginner. But it is frustrating for someone, who has basic familiarity with the language and is looking to improve. The program has too many elements, like the speaking, writing, quizzing, etc. And the conversations are so basic and repetitive that it is annoying. I wish there was a version that offered a refresher approach or a reading based approach for those who know the basics and want to expand their vocabulary and brush on grammar. Alternatively, it would be nice if one didn't have to purchase the basic levels in order to get the more advanced sessions. Rocket language dialogs seem to focus more on tourist activities. Also, I think it would be useful to have all of the presenters speaking with the proper accent. In the German course, only one of the presenters is a native speaker. Finally, the speech recognition is slow and often spotty - and that's on the desktop version. In the iOS app, many of the quiz/practice functions don't work at all. I purchased the program because it was on sale, but I should have just relied on reading German books and media and on watching movies in German.

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Overall, I understand the structure of the course, but it seems like many aspects, especially in testing, are done by a cookie-cutter algorithm which makes some really critical mistakes.

First, some technical issues. I use Chrome, as recommended, and there are a few things missing. Most notably, the on-screen Korean keyboard is not there. Also, I often do not have the button to mark a Writing lesson as completed. Finally, unlike in the app, there is no way for me to cut a voice recording off if I wish to restart, which often means waiting quite a while for the program to try to sort through gibberish.

Now, for the "cookie-cutter" aspect that bothers me. Frequently in the Audio lessons, the native speakers will say something that was not part of the lesson. This is fine, except that these phrases get put in the testing sections. For example, in the very first lesson there are introductions of the two native speakers. One says that he served in the Korean Marine Corps, then was discharged and migrated to the United States with his parents. He says this in Korean. This is a great way to get acquainted with the sound of the language. However, then this phrase comes up in the testing section of the exam.

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As a completely new person to Korean, this course is not what I should have chosen to begin with. To be able to feel like you "completed" the lesson, you have to write things in a language they have not taught you yet! The lessons are too long and having to learn the "extras" to feel like you completed the material they were focusing on is also frustrating. I have no incentive to move through the material, because I feel like I can't even perfect the first few lessons!
The voice detection sometimes is very poor, which means saying the same thing fifty times at lightning speed to get credit for it. I like other programs for learning Korean better than this one. I might come back to it after I have a better foundation.