Find out what actual users have to say about our courses through their Rocket Chinese reviews.
The record with voice recognition grading really helps to get your pronunciation right, and the playback of your voice really helps you find out why you did get the grade you expected. These tools give a strong incentive to practice speaking, and have helped me to progress faster. The downside is that these tools are only practically useful on PC and not useful on Android because of speed and different limited web page. (I cannot speak for Apple versions).
I would give the course 5 stars if all features were available on all platforms.
On android viewing the website, speech recognition is so much slower to respond, and much less accurate, so the time delays become frustrating - it is very dependent on internet and wireless speed. The key thing android misses is it that it has no ability to play back what you said (so that you can hear and correct your own mistakes). From the forum comments this appears to have been missing for 2 years or more, and I think Rocket Languages should make playback of your own voice a priority fix for android users.
I am just restarting to learn Mandarin using Rocket Chinese because I had been too busy teaching and building new courses at my current school in China.
Positive:
1. Listening, Reading (in pinyin - latin script and Simplified - chinese script), Writing (initially in pinyin) and speaking is available from the very first lesson.
2. Step by step in a logical fashion based on what would seem to be logical needs of a person new to learning the language.
3. Clear and colourful interface that is easy to follow.
4. There are now cute little incentive badges that give you a sense of your progress. These complement the already colourful interface, but I think this is helpful for both younger and older learners
While I like the course layout very much, there are just a couple of tiny problems that I suspect will be addressed quite quickly on the technical side.
1. I haven't yet figured out how to prevent my browser (Firefox) from asking permission everytime RocketChinese wants to use the camera/microphone. Because I am used to the 7/24 customer service, email is obviously slower, but their responses are usually within 24 hours... so, not intolerable.
2.
I really like the format on the website. And I really like that it has a mobile app. However I travel a lot and the time I have most available to practice Chinese is when I am on a plane. You can download the MP3 files but I really wish the APP would allow you to cache the sections you are working on so they worked on a plane. Overall I think it is a good value. and I like the program but I just wish it was more tailored to working off line.
If you are a language lover like me and wish to learn many languages but not the typical boring way and want to fast forward it, go for rocket languages which gives you an amazing experience of how to converse in any language...Rocket Languages is the best place to learn a language quickly and efficiently.
really confusing sometimes. dont help you very much. i wouldnt recommend it to a friend. they need to put more iinfo. dont help you with vocab very much. dont really like it. it was also reaally har to submit reviews or ask them questions so of courese dont like service or prices.
It is awesome. I learned so much. I am still just a beginner, but learned so much sense we bought it. Thanks I love it so much. I hope a lot of people learn stuff through it. Rocket Chinese is the best.
I was somewhat reluctant to spend money on a Chinese language course as there are so many free resources available online. However, I decided to invest in Rocket Chinese so that I could follow a clear, structured course, to help me learn useful Chinese before I move to China to study later this year. I am so glad I did, as the course has been great. I love that I can download the audio lessons to practise when I have no internet access. I also like how each lesson contains not only the interactive audio, but also writing and speaking exercises, with the ability to record my speech and hear it back to compare it to the native speaker. I have already recommended Rocket Chinese to others who will be moving to study in China at the same time as myself.
I think the overall teaching style of this program is pretty great, but the execution is not there yet.
The major shortcoming is the male's pronunciation. I am a complete beginner to studying Chinese, but it's incredibly obvious his pronunciation is absolutely awful. During the conversations, I can understand the female perfectly fine, but I still can't understand the male speaker well even after studying the lesson. I also worry that I may pick up bad habits myself even listening to his speech.
Another minor drawback is that I do not believe there is a way to zoom in or make the characters larger on the mobile app, which is unfortunate since I tend to study these lessons while exercising on an elliptical or other cardio machine, so the phone is a fair distance away from my eyes.
A feature I wish they would add in the future is increased robustness of the conversations. Instead of teaching us exactly one perfectly scripted conversation, teach us variations. Most of the time there are a handful of different ways someone could say the same thing, so even if the conversation is relatively simple in content, learning just one specific tightly scripted conversation is going to be pretty useless once you step out into the real world.
Overall, Rocket Chinese is founded on good ideas and has solid potential, I hope it will strive to improve and live up to the potential I see.
I'm new to Chinese. Since I'll be taking a teaching position in Shanghai over the summer I've been researching, practicing, and learning how to speak Chinese and about the Chinese culture.
After three days with the Rocket Chinese trial, I decided to become a full member. Although, I use other Chinese lessons too, I find myself coming back to Rocket Chinese for reinforcement and to build new vocabulary.
As an educator I know that keeping learning fun and enjoyable is as important as the content.
Thank you for creating such a great learning tool.
Dan
Your program is fine and efficient. Nevertheless the dialogues are a little boring ("Beijing seems to be a big city" , well, who doesn't know it?) and there is a BIG mistake in lesson 5.5 Places worth checking out in Beijing (the quizz) : the Great Wall of China CANNOT be seem from the moon ! Check it if you don't believe me. It's a myth !!!