Rocket Languages Reviews

I hate to write this, but the English guide's strange midcentury Boston brahmin accent is so distracting that I cannot hear the Korean being spoken. Aside from the strange English, the phrases used for study are very long and not broken up into memorizable parts, and there is no option to not include the very long and unnecessary "extra vocab" from the audio in the flashcards and other study.
Overall this seems to be teaching canned phrases to be stored in short-term memory, rather than starting out small and forming a true understanding of the language for long-term learning. This might be good if you're visiting Korea for a short period and need to parrot some emergency phrases, but I may have to look elsewhere to actually learn to understand Korean. Pretty disappointed in how much money I spent.

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.

Read More

It is such a shame. Rocket has the potential to be really good, but lack of attention to detail and poor explanations mean that it fails to reach its potential.

I have almost finished my Rocket Korean course. I have benefited from it, but only because I have a Korean wife, who has been able to explain things that Rocket have left vague, not explained well or just got plain wrong. First, the good things. The reinforcement process (Flashcards, oral repetition and so on) is excellent and has helped things to stick in my mind. The voice recognition software is also pretty good. It is weak on short words of one or two syllables, but in general works well. The audio conversations and reinforcement within them are also decent. There are three big problems with Rocket, however. Firstly, it’s explanations of grammar are not very clear and sometimes contain errors. Secondly it illustrates concepts with sentences that are far too complex and contain sections which are not explained. This is incredibly frustrating, because it means that you end up rote learning a lot of phrases rather than learning how to construct your own sentences. Finally the reference material and structure is very weak.

Read More

I really like the tool and I that you can record your voice and compared to the native is the best function. I learned quite alot of words but there is one big problem. The man speaks with a Rio De Janeiro accent. When I came to Sao paulo where my wife is from many people laughed at my strong accent and I realized I have gotten a really strong Rio De Janeiro accent which does not seem like the best of accents xD.

I wanted to have a Sao paulo accent and after knowing this fact I could not continue as the portuguese accent was not the one I was looking for. So I love the service but the audio is just not what I am looking for making it not usable.

Very disappointed. I bought this primarily for verbal skills & to be confident to talk the language. The voice recognition software for all devices is dreadful. It is woefully inadequate & buggy.
Aside there aren’t any repeat reinforcements in the lessons & each one is loaded with ‘additional’ vocabulary which confuses the core lesson.

Seeing all the rave reviews makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me. I am not a linguistic novice; I am a native speaker of English but a fluent speaker of Korean, I majored in linguistics in graduate school, and I've studied several languages both in university classes and on my own. But I'm having a hard time making any progress in Rocket Chinese. Eleven- or twelve-morpheme sentences are just too long for a beginner in the language. And while Lin Ping's spoken examples are very clear and easy to understand, David always sounds like his mouth is full of food and everything runs together. (I'm sure his Chinese is very good, but Chinese itself tends to sound like that to start with. It's just really frustrating.)

I bought the complete premium course and am wondering if I made a terrible decision.

I've been using the Rocket Spanish for 53 days, and while it has some good points, it's not an effective program for learning Spanish. The co-host, Mauricio, does not speak clearly enough for a beginner to understand, and there are some times when he is clearly not saying the sentence that is on the screen. I might recommend this program for business travelers, since that is mainly what the lessons are about (getting a hotel, booking a flight, ordering in a restaurant), but even then, you won't become fluent. You will just learn what you need to know to get around in that country. I've just requested a refund.

Out is very difficult to get the scoring of certain spoken words to work properly. Course 9.11 is the most frustrating Rocket Spanish lesson so far. In the"Hear it Say it" module, every single infinitive - conocer, poder, querer, etc- could not be scored 100% no matter how it was pronounced.

There is a lot to love about Rocket Languages - particularly the way you are encouraged to speak and interact with the material. The material, though, is the reason I am cancelling Rocket German Level 3. There are many useful words, structures, and conversations here, but I seriously have to question the didactic approach. Explanations of necessary grammar concepts were often missing or incomplete. Useless vocabulary (e.g. "Ha ha") is given equal weight with sentences much too long to memorize. Good model sentences are mixed in with numerous old song lyrics, tongue twisters, and "Max und Moritz" lines which should be presented just for entertainment. I was spending far too much time trying to weed out the material that had no real value for learning German. I must admit that I'm disappointed in this course. I've used Rocket French and was very impressed, but this course needs an overhaul before I can either use or recommend it.

Note from Rocket Languages: Hi David, thanks a lot for leaving us a review. We're currently in the process of reviewing Rocket German - so this is valuable feedback! We're sorry you weren't satisfied with the course and hope you might reconsider after Rocket German Level 3 is updated. Until then - happy learning! Your Rocket German Team

I enjoy the conversations that Rocket Italian is based on, but as a language instructor that uses strictly immersion techniques, I can't stand the amount of English that is in each lesson. There is SO much room for additional vocab that could be taught through the use of more exclusive Italian. It makes me frustrated to waste so much time on English banter. I am really struggling to make use of this course.