Rocket Japanese Reviews
Find out what actual users have to say about our courses through their Rocket Japanese reviews.
The fact that Keni and Sayaka, native Japanese, do the speaking, and then Sarah, an American, does the explaining, is quite helpful as it allows for you hear what it would sound when spoken by a native, but it is easier to understand when being explained. I am pretty happy with it so far, albeit I haven't really gotten that far in. I purchased all 3 lessons so I sure as hell hope its good all the way through! There seems to be around 200 lessons I have to get through, so it will certainly keep me occupied for a while. Here are my two complaints, I hope these are fixed in the future because I think it would truly be a nearly perfect language learning course after that:
#1. I think a lot of us have this issue. The microphone does not work well, even with headphones. It's often with shorter words, and I understand that's simply because shorter words are harder to pick up with speech recognition. Albeit, when the internet is slow, none of them work.
#2: This is the most important: what would be extremely helpful is text documents going into greater depth on grammar and structure. I know that we're sort of supposed to learn that long the way, but at the beginning you are left feeling sort of lost, and we will have to learn these rules at some point. Having a reference point to study up on would be infinitely helpful in terms of grammar. And this wouldn't even require much, I do not think--perhaps a PDF a few pages long telling the basic rules of Japanese.
Response from Rocket Languages
Hi Aldrich - Thanks for your review. We are actually at the start of a project to completely redo the Rocket Japanese Language lessons so that they are far more closely aligned with the JLPT structure. We hope to have the Level 1 of these new lessons out within a couple of months. At the same time we will be looking at the voice recognition examples and making those better if need be.
the rōmaji on the flashcards is driving me away from using Rocket for Japanese.
just maddening to have in SETTINGS as OFF
In 1/5 of a lsdon, I can set English OFF but where i WANT it off, it is stck ON as a feature ?!?
Response from Rocket Languages
Hi Robert, you can turn the romaji, kana and kanji on/off in the FlashCard settings at top right of the FlashCards themselves.
Good for kids to learn other languages you shoul recommend it a five star it's an awesome app. :)
I started learning Japanese for a vacation I was going to take in Japan (That got canceled due to the outbreak), after having taken a year of Japanese in college about 15 years ago. The lessons are good and clear overall. Sometimes they do not give very good explanations of the grammar they introduce, for example using -you in one lesson and -sou in the same and never explaining the difference. The quizzes can also be frustrating, because sometimes a lesson teaches multiple very similar words, and the flash cards do not make it clear which reading they are looking for. It'd be more useful if the quizzes had different combinations of the vocabulary and grammar we learned in the lesson instead of just repeating the exact phrases. That way we'd be learning the concepts and not just memorizing phrases.
Overall though the lessons are very useful and very helpful for learning Japanese when you don't have much time to spend.
It's hard to accurately review Rocket Language Japanese, since the levels are so different in quality, but after 2+ years I believe that I can give you a very accurate impression of the first 2 levels, I hope, unless major changes has been made in 2019-2020 (I still haven't made it past level 2, and I haven't used the course since December 2019).
Level 1 is AMAZING! 5 stars! I couldn't recommend it more!
True story: after doing the first section, it helped me land a job in Japan!
I had to do an interview in Japanese via Skype (I needed conversational Japanese for the position), and several of the Q&A was straight of Rocket Languages Japanese Level 1!! I honestly felt that I only had basic Japanese, but the interviewer considered my level to be conversational Japanese and I landed the position!
Level 2 is such a disappointment! The conversations are wayyyy to fast compared to Level 1, and the target language is not anywhere near as useful for everyday living in Japan, I find. Keigo should be taught at a much later stage, and instead it would be much more useful to teach colloquial Japanese that you can actually use with your friends! When you use the masu form that is mainly used in the course, your friends will say: "Yeah...
Response from Rocket Languages
Hi Snowah - We are in fact starting on a complete revamp of Rocket Japanese very shortly! All new lessons will be available to existing members for free.
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.
Response from Rocket Languages
Hi Andrew, thanks for the detailed feedback. Unfortunately, very short words tend not to work very well with voice recognition as they don't have a lot of context. With regards the lessons themselves, we are in the process of completely redoing the Language & Culture lessons and hope to have those up in the next couple of months. Unfortunately, the pandemic has put a halt to a lot of our activities.
This is the best language program I have ever used. Excellent, step-wise instruction. Being able to record and listen to myself and compare with a native speaker is invaluable. I supplement the reading and writing part with Duolingo, but Rocket Japanese is the ONLY way to learn! I spend hours on this program and in just over a month, I have learned so much. It is pricey, but well worth it. Actually it would be cheaper than a full fledged in person course. ありがとうございました!!!!
I am always interested in continuing to learn the Japanese language
i just started so far its the best i keep on going back to the recording and hearing myself and i know doesn't sound right so i practice saying it out loud over and over but a great website to start learning
I really like this product. I've tried several others over the years and this is the best. I'm especially impressed with how every year the site is improved with updates that actually improve the product. I love how much the writing section has improved, much easier to learn Hiragana and Katakana as well as to learn how to speak the language (with feedback, you are rated plus you can listen to what you actually sound like).
I own Rocket French and Rocket Japanese, all three levels for both languages and am very happy with the results. If you work steady, you will get excellent results.