Rocket Languages. 4+

Disappointed

The first week or so, everything worked amazingly. Things drastically went down hill from there. The audio does not work at all. I reached out to customer service and they told me to reinstall the app but they were pretty dismissive with my issues. I reinstalled the app and there is still no audio. How are you supposed to learn when you can’t hear how a word is pronounced?

The next thing is the audio recognition. Again, first week it went great. After that, I can no longer use this feature. This was another issue I brought to their attention and they told me that feature is not compatible. It worked fine when I first got it. Even on their website, the audio and the microphone do not work.

This has been a huge waste of money. The bugs completely make the program useless and the customer service is severely lacking. If they ever get these issues fix, it would be fantastic. I was learning Japanese very quickly with this for that first week but it has now been 5 months since I’ve been able to use it. I keep checking regularly to see if they’ve fixed the issues, because like I said, this would be a fantastic program.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your review, it's much appreciated. Our apologies for the trouble you've had with the course. We have recently released an updated version of the app. Please try it again, and let us know if you continue to have problems with it.

Jury still out

The most important aspect of a language program is whether or not it guides you towards learning a language. In perhaps 4-5 weeks of use, I feel Rocket Languages is accomplishing that goal.

I like the lesson variety. They typically begin with 20ish minute audio exchanges, followed by lessons involving listen and repeat using speech recognition, listen and write, read and speak, etc. Combining hearing, seeing, speaking, and writing at least for me help to reinforce the learning process.

By far the worst aspect of the app is the plethora of bugs. As mentioned in at least one other review, the speech recognition software often has difficulty understanding you and the problem worsens the longer you use the app for a given sitting. Often it reaches a point where the moment you press the microphone to speak you receive an immediate disclaimer that the app is sorry but it didn’t understand you, failing to provide any time whatsoever to actually attempt to speak. Deleting and reloading the app clears things up for a bit, but the problem always returns. It’s also not uncommon to see other bugs related to missing words, sentences, or translations as you work through a given lesson.

I’m making progress leaning Spanish, but the app issues certainly have hindered my progress to a degree, and that’s disappointing.

Pretty good...when it works

I like using the Rocket Spanish app. I’m learning things I wasn’t taught in similar apps. But it’s also kind of infuriating because of one defect in particular. There are certain lessons where the audio for certain phrases simply won't play! When I press the play arrow next to the phrase, it blinks for a second like it’s gonna play, but then nothing happens. And more importantly this happens anytime the phrase appears in any of the quizzes at the end of the lesson. Anytime any one of those phrases appears I just have to skip it because it’s impossible to respond correctly without hearing the audio. I sent an email to the company about this, but I’ve heard nothing back. Oh, and there’s another bug that I noticed recently. In the quizzes there’s an area for you to type your answer. In a recent update the background of this area and the color of the text are now both white, which means you can’t even see what you’re typing anymore!