Rocket Languages Reviews

I've been using Rocket Italian since about March 2019 and I purchased the program because I am required to pass a language exam. I purchased all 3 levels and if you are someone traveling to Italy or learning basic conversational skills this program is great. However, if you have more intermediate needs this program is just ok. It would be nice if there were more breakdowns of the conversations once you get more advanced and provide simple words or phrases to translate. While building skills, the program will ask you to learn the verb to have and memorize extremely long sentences in the same lesson. This happens most lessons and is ineffective for my learning because it doesn't help you practice the skill and learn competency but memorization.

One of the tenses used most often in my work is the historic past and this tense is the one with the least information and preparation. Beyond that, what I've noticed is that the program pushes you to learn specific meanings of words. For example, in one lesson that began with the word "well" I responded with a translation of dunque. The program marked me wrong and was looking for allora. Both are acceptable translations and I am likely to come across both.

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The courses itself are well structured and have intuitive user interface. I also like that you often repeat phrases in next lessons.
However the performance of the web site and its responsiveness is not always very good. I had few days when lessons hangs and I also see that while doing speaking exercises it is quite often that it will not catch the phrase I speak even after 2-3 attempts.

Not truly rating yet, Really, I just started it. Only on lesson 1.1. Not sufficient to judge. Using this along with other sources, Penguin book, Living languages CDs and Duolingo and Master Russian online, plus a few other lesser sources. Plus I'm already familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet as I used it in the Air Force back in 1962-4. I'm 76 now and not in a hurry as I have no place to use Russian, just keeping the brain active. Thus most of the vocabulary and some of the theory of lessons 1.1 and 1.2, I already am already familiar with from the other sources. Each course also has differing additional vocabulary. Having said that, I do like being able to hear and mimic the pronunciations and working through the exercises to help remember the vocabulary. It is impossible to rate a program so soon. I would prefer to do my rating after a month or so when I really know what to rate. Stay tuned.

My feelings with this course are quite mixed. On one hand, there is a lot of material and you pick up useful phrases from the very start. On the other hand there are several issues which in the long run are quite frustrating especially in the testing part

1) Apart from the Quiz section, everything else is clearly automatically generated from the material. This means you can have the same word repeated 2 or 3 times. In the "Know it" part there are cases where you cannot know what to say because two words have the same english translation (tourist).
2) Speech recognition is frustrating. It stops listening while you are talking, sometimes it doesn't want to recognize what you say no matter what (I even tried playing back the native audio from my phone near to the computer microphone, and it didn't even recognize the native speaker!) and sometimes it says 100% even if you mess up a few syllabes.

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I found that I would prefer to see the written words as well while learning the pronunciation, i did not see this on the trial so i opted out

Voice recognition is very variable with certain short words. eg un, deux trois. The rest of the numbers appear fine. How do you get better than 35% on a one word answer eg être?
Overall I think the programme is very good

Not as structured as I'd like. Some of the lessons seem unnecessary, as I wouldn't use them in everyday life. I have previously used Pimsleur but thought this was a better deal. I prefer the lessons with the interactive audio kind of like Pimsleur. the other lessons aren't super helpful, but I guess they are nice to have... I wish there was more repetition of phrases instead of single words. Interface on both app and browser are outdated and could use some major updates (especially the app). Kinda buggy, but that is forgiven. I also use the hellochinese app, and it is great. Might go back to Pimsleur if it wasn't so overpriced.

I like the program, though it goes VERY slowly and each unit is terribly long. But the biggest problem is that after working for awhle on a unit it crashes and I get a message saying "aw snap, something went wrong". This happens every day

The course is fine and the french lessons are in good taste but for a developing country like Brazil the prices are absurdly high and literally makes it impossible for me to actually buy the course.

UMMMMM FIRST OF ALL IT WON'T LET ME DO OTHER LESSONS BECAUSE I'M JUST DOING THE FREE PART - IT ADVERTISES THAT IT'S FREE - A COMPLETE TRICK!!!! OUTRAGEOUS! IT DOESN'T TEACH YOU PROPERLY - IT TELLS YOU TO REPEAT THE STATEMENT/QUESTION AND THAT'S IT!!! NOTHING ELSE! I AM VERY UNSATISFIED WITH THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE AND WOULD RECOMMEND NOT LEARNING FRENCH FROM THIS HORRIBLE WEBSITE - I WOULD SUGGEST NOT EVEN LOOKING AT THIS WEBSITE!!! A SCAM, I TELL YOU!