Rocket Chinese Reviews

I'm an engineer and reviewed many competing products like Pimsleur (too audio oriented), Rosetta Stone (no English explanations, just clicking on pictures), Duolingo (not sophisticated enough) and others and finally decided on Rocket Chinese. I was pleasantly surprised with this product because it explains everything I'm learning in English and has wonderful tests, flashcards, and other tools to help me learn. The first lesson started with Ni Hao which is what I expected, where as other applications did not. Highly recommend Rocket for learning any language.

Excellent course material, covers all the reading/writing/listening and speaking components of learning a language. Progresses very smoothly and plenty of ways to brush up on older material with flashcards or listening and translating.

Great course I came from Duolingo and I'm really enjoying it, I'm really picky about recorces as you can see and this is defenintly the best by far, this course has good challenges and that's what I'm about, so recommended!!!

So far, it is an excellent investment. I like the variety of study materials provided for each lesson. As well as giving a little bit of cultural insight into things. There are times when the audio detection seems a bit off and doesn't pick up what you're saying accurately, and it assumes you're saying something totally off. I don't mind repeating myself to get scored correctly; practice makes perfect anyways. Just one minor flaw that I have seen thus far.

So far so good, quite pricy though. And maybe it would be fun with something for visual learners. Overall it is very good but still has potential to improve. I have no experience of the customer service so that one is neither good or bad.
How likely I'm to buy it again depends on if I get a big discount on another language.

The more I go through the course, the more frustrating it gets. Instead of learning and practicing individual words, I'm supposed to memorize incredibly complex sentences without understanding the meaning of how all the words work together in the sentence. There is no logical progression from learning words to forming sentences. As a result, I forget everything immediately and feel demotivated. And I stumble over the pronunciation because I have to say ten new words at a time. There is no daily reinforcement of previous lessons, which makes the course meaningless over time.

Rocket Chinese is definitely good value for money because the course appears to continue until you finish it at your own pace. You can take a break and come back to it no matter the timescale and for this reason, it gets a 5/5. I thought the pricing was perhaps a little expensive but still worth it because many other Chinese apps lose out on subscriptions because after a year you don't get any more time and sometimes it can take a while to get into learning Chinese. One can be enthusiastic to begin with and then realise they are not quite ready to learn it within a year's limited period and money wasted. This happened to me with Rocket Chinese, when I subscribed, after half a year, I was not really ready and lost interest and was worried I might lose my money. Well now I'm ready to learn and very enthusiastic and it took me years before it started to make sense and I'm now ready to absorb the teaching. I would definitely recommend Rocket Chinese for the reasons I stated. Other Chinese apps like Chairman Bao etc are excellent but are just way too expensive for just a year's subscription and make it not worth purchasing no matter how good it is.

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I'm enjoying Rocket languages with both Spanish and Chinese.

I do like that the literal translation is also provided. It helps to understand how the sentence is structured. I often try to do it in my head but it's nice to the see it confirmed.

Microphone does not pick up short words, so it is impossible to check pronunciation on basic language units. Especially debilitating for Chinese learners where tonal pronunciation is crucial.

There is very little teaching. Provided flash card sets dumping 30 new terms with no organization, no intuitive backbone reflective of that of the language itself makes me question the expertise of the instructors. This weakness is also reflected in sloppy errors: voice lines which don't match the text underneath, an occasional condescending tone to the learner, and statements that words completely new to the learner were already covered in previous lessons when they were not.

This software would be acceptable if it was free, but given the high price, it's quality does not justify a purchase.