Rocket Languages Reviews

The flash cards and the know it parts are especially good and handy. Narrowing down what you need more work on, followed by a review and a new test. Also, the audio sections are arranged in a handy way for me. I completed another Spanish course, so really am intermediate, but am using the ending review parts of the audio courses in the beginning modules to refresh myself and also to learn the different words covered here.

Blows Duolingo out of the water. I purchased this program for my teens before we make a trip to Latin America. We're enjoying it!

The way it explains the language is very nice for a beginning student. The conversations are nicely spelled out and the speaking of the people is easily understood. The conversations are also spoken slowly so it is easy to understand and it isn't overwhelming. My daughter enjoys the application and hopes it will help her in french class this year in school.

For the price this is a very good program and the interactive sections are easy to understand. I've used other online programs and so far this one is the best. My main dissatisfaction with it has to do with the organization of the information presented. After the self study sections it would make sense to use the new vocabulary and/or concepts presented during the interactive lessons. For example: There's an entire lesson dealing with the weather but no where in the succeeding interactive lessons is there any discussion of weather. When vocabulary is not used, it's easily forgotten. And you end up with little sense of how to include it in conversation. Also, when new grammatical concepts are introduced in the interactive lessons there isn't always a discussion of the concept. Examples: (1) Nel, nella, negli are presented in unit 4. It's a completely new group of prepositional phrases, but there's no explanation. (2) When nouns ending in E are pluralized, the ending is always i (as in the masculine) regardless of whether the noun is masculine or feminine. I purchased an Italian grammar book and was able to clear up my confusion around this, but it should have been mentioned in one of the lessons where a plural feminine noun ended in an i. These are just the most recent issues of this kind I've encountered. There are more. So, more thought regarding organization and presentation would be warranted.

Rocket (Spanish) is, I believe, a great language learning program. I say “I believe” because I have been using it a short time and have not successfully learned a Spanish, yet.

Pros:
I chose Rocket over courses from other companies because the trial demonstrated that it is more thorough.
It also seemed to focus on Mexican Spanish instead of European. Since I live in California, this is important to me.
The instructors are very clear and entertaining. Pro reviews say they are a bit cheesy but I do not think so.
A clean user interface that works well on my iOS devices. It is not as pretty as, say, Memrise or Duolingo, but it is well structured.
For my learning styles I feel the audio lesson, followed by an activity, flash cards, reading, writing and quiz is more thorough than any others have to offer.
Lessons are downloadable on my iOS devices, but...

Cons
...i stay in a hotel with poor wifi and although I download the lessons at home, for some reason my iPad (wifi only) will sit there and spin like its trying to stream the lesson, even though i had previously downloaded it, and this prevents me from even using the lesson at all when it does this
VERY EXPENSIVE. I paid almost $300 for the program for all levels lifetime.

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Rocket French is an excellent product. My greatest struggle (to date) is understanding spoken French. Rocket French does a much better job with this than other platforms. I also really like the lifetime ownership.

Something to improve is the voice recognition. It doesn't work all that well, and is often frustrating. Other than that, great product.

I am very happy with the course and feel that i am retaining a lot of words and pronunciation learned. I am certainly glad that the material is up-to-date and has native speakers of both sexes so you can not only hear how you need to say it but how others might respond.

It is good for someone who knows nothing to be able to gain useful phrases and to practice the proper pronunciation. The material covers a good range of every day communication which is good if you are planning to use this for traveling.

Probably a good jump start to begin using the language right away.

I've only just started my course and am on module 1. However I am really enjoying it and find the course much better than a short course I did recently. I find it a much better course for teaching modern conversational German. As the previous one was more academic. I would prefer if the mobile app was tweaked so that the screen remained always on and not slept while being used in the car. That aside I can highly recommend the course however.

Overall this is a very good program.
*I compare this with DuoLingo online learning as well as a personal coach I use with Verbling. Also against Babble
which I used for 6 months.
*Price is kind of high but it is for a complete program so I'm neutral on this rating.
*Lessons are interesting. I could use less of the banter but still, very good content when focused on actual language
skills. Of great importance to me are the moderators speaking in a clear and moderate speed. Rocket delivers on
this!
* Now to my most concerning (to me) knock...Some of the exercises are terribly long in the Language and Cultural
sections. It's not uncommon to have 50, 60 or greater than 70 words, phrases or sentences to learn, memorize and
recite back. Personally, I get very frustrated when i fail due to sheer volume of material. Knowing how difficult and
frustrating these exercises are, I have to fight the urge to simply by-pass these sections. Reducing the volume within
Language and Cultural modules would be a huge plus for me.