Rocket Languages Reviews

I like the idea of the course, but I find it too cumbersome to use on a regular basis. Firstly, I practice at home in the evenings and it is disruptive for me to be speaking aloud continuously. Half the time this feature does not work for me, likely because I have slow internet. It also absolutely cannot understand me when I say the word "enchilada" even though I am 99% sure I am pronouncing it correctly. Secondly, the rating system is really annoying and I do not understand it at all. I would like to be able to run through lessons without having to click on a rating (I also have yet to figure out what "so so" and "good" mean). Clicking a rating after every single answer makes me take my hand off of the keyboard to reach the mouse to click, when it would be much quicker and simpler to be able to just hit 'enter' to go to the next phrase or word. This is especially annoying during the typing practice, which also requires the use of a virtual keyboard to type special characters. There should be keyboard shortcuts for these, it takes an inordinate amount of time to find the characters and select the right one for very short words.

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I like the interaction in the 'Play it' section but there are problems;

1. The programme frequently states that it has not heard my reply - despite that when I press playback my reply is very clearly there - this is very frustrating and time consuming.

2. The programme makes no allowance for a beginner taking time making a reply which inevitably takes a lot longer than a fluent speaker would take - this again is very frustrating and prevents making best use of the programme.

I am a bilingual person (translator from English into French) trying to learn Japanese. I've been trying several methods books, on-line, etc., over several years. Even though this method is far more interesting and educational than Rosetta, I feel that it is lacking of grammatical points or explanations, so to be a complete learner, you need to complement it by another mean (books or apps). After saying that, I will still recommend this on-line method, since I believe it is one of the best today.
Improvements:
The testing system: it would be more educational to be testing more than 5 (Japanese 2) or 10 questions (Japanese 2), while the listen and writing, test you on over 30 questions.
Even though the voice recognition improve dramatically over the years, it is still sometimes difficult to use it, especially with long sentence in the Play role section. The system stops before I say half of the sentences. It works fine most of the time with single word.
The first audio is too long and have a lot of unnecessary moments. For example, why practicing to say a word or sentence when it is listed in the vocabulary section in which you can learn how to say it as well? Also, to be honest, Kenny's voice is a little annoying after a while.

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I have been using the program for about a month and a half now and I have found it somewhat useful. My level is above that of a new beginner but not quite yet intermediate. My concerns about the program, starting with the idea that most people want what will be most useful i.e. picking up useful spoken language for travel, is that particularly when testing, the program expects your responses to be almost in the same order as their introduction. If the expected answer starts with Tu and you use the Vous form, you are marked as incorrect. The program should note what form is wanted. A "hint" function also would be nice to help someone with responses as learning, not just simple memorization, is the goal. The program also occasionally makes some unexpected detours from what is useful. For example, one lesson moved from general travel issues to a flight of fancy to go skiing. I did not find a lot of useful information in that lesson. Finally, today I took a test which contained a large number of questions involving the "passe simple". The last question on the test asked how much one would expect to hear the passe simple and the correct answer was "almost never". So, I feel a lot of time was wasted that could have been better spent elsewhere. I hope these comments are considered helpful. There are good things here but a few tweaks would make it much better.

The accent is laughable. As in, my spanish friends couldn't stop laughing. It's Mexican spanish, in a bad accent. The plays and lessons are mired in stereotypes, sexist, and awful. As far as actually learning Spanish goes, I'm struggling on with it, but I can't say it's really helped so far. Hopefully it will start sticking, but having spent six weeks in Madrid recently, I didn't feel this course helped me at all, and I was still struggling with even the most basic conversations. There doesn't seem to be any background to the lessons, or intricacies of the verbs and their conjugations, which are just brushed over.
I've paid for it now, so will keep persevering for the moment, but I regret the purchase.

I think more emphasize should be placed in Hangul! Its the foundation of the language and everything is so jumbled. Consonant, vowels should be separated and thought differently. I learned by watch children videos of sing alongs in Hangul. Like they make it so simple there. Its ok I guess... It needs more material to be concise. But good program

So far RL is okay. The audios are entertaining, but a tad slow and I wished that they were a bit less English-heavy as it really breaks my French-thinking mindset. Any technical issues (and there are quite a few given the nature of the voice recognition software) that are reported fall onto deaf ears. Overall, it's an okay program, but needs heavy supplementation from grammar and vocab books (as all learners should have anyway).

Rocket Languages has interactive audio lessons that makes it easier and more fun to learn from. In addition, the reviews at the end are very helpful and different from any other program I've used. I have learned way more efficiently now with so much more to look forward too.

Although Rocket Languages tells a good story, waiting 2 days for an answer to a question is ridiculous! For this reason alone I could not in good
conscience recommend it to someone learning their first foreign language

The price can't be beat! I especially enjoy that I control what and when I want to focus on for my study sessions. The interactive audio sessions actually helps me to think in the target language. I'm having problems with the speech recognition and will likely need to contact tech support; however, the first few hours into the course and I'm enjoying what I received for the price.