Rocket French Review

If you're really serious about learning French at home, you'll probably end up looking into the more comprehensive course at some stage. And you're going to see a lot of people singing the praises of Rocket French, by Rocket Languages.

Rocket French has been around for quite a few years now, even if it doesn't have quite the same profile as bigger players like Rosetta Stone. I first went through the course in 2008, and I've been watching the program evolve since then.

Despite being a bit less flashy than some of the competitors, Rocket French gets consistently good reviews from users.

With the 2022 release, a bunch of lessons have been rewritten and the whole interface has had a good makeover. But is it just window dressing? Is the course actually any good? Let's take a look...

P.S: It's a good idea to head over and sign up for the free trial if you haven't already. You don't need to enter a credit card, and you'll be able to understand what I'm talking about in this review. Done that? Let's go! 

Generally when I hear "interactive audio course" I think "Great. They're going to make me say a useless phrase over and over again until I rage-throw my phone across the room."

But I've changed my tune with Rocket French's Interactive Audio lessons.

These downloadable episodes follow the adventures (or often, misadventures) of our two hosts in France. Each lesson includes a conversation practice, surrounded by some educational banter between the hosts.

In Rocket French Level 1 there are 29 podcast-style lessons which you can save onto your phone or download onto your computer. Each lesson takes around 20 minutes, which was the perfect length for me to learn a little French on my walk to work.

The important thing to note is that the lessons are not just dull repetition. During the course of each lesson you'll naturally encounter a bunch of grammar and vocabulary, and the two hosts will go off on tangents and explain how this is similar to that, and why you need to be careful about that other thing.

For me, learning the grammar and vocab in context like this seems a lot easier and more natural. I was impressed at how much I learned just from these lessons, without even needing to dip into any serious grammar lessons.

I would even say that if you're looking for a quick crash-course in French to help you while traveling, these Interactive Audio lessons might be all you need.

But if you are aiming for full fluency, you'll need to dive into some grammar lessons. Luckily, Rocket French has that covered too...

Recently these lessons appear to have been given an overhaul — they are now a lot friendlier and more empathetic than they used to be. The writers don't assume that you already know your prepositions from your pronouns — they'll actually explain what they are and why they're important first.

For a long time this "textbookiness" has been the biggest gripe I've had with Rocket French, so it's really great to see that they've listened and made the lessons more accessible.

‍Handy hint: Rocket French lets you filter the lesson types so that you only see Interactive Audio lessons, or Language and Culture lessons. You can also hop around the course and take lessons in any order.

But I recommend sticking to the course outline and doing the lessons in order, so that you go through the Interactive Audio lessons for a module before tackling the grammar lessons in that module.

Each lesson inside Rocket French comes with a collection of self-testing tools which are designed to work on all angles of fluency: Listening comprehension, speaking, translating, and being able to find the right words when you're under pressure. You also get a useful flashcard game for every module, and you can create your own flashcard sets. (This is incredibly useful.)

All these tools help reinforce the material you've just learned in a different way, so you can make sure you really know it. They're great for building confidence, and I found that my recall was much better after using them.

These would be good for older kids too.

Tell the truth. Do you ever speak your French out loud? Are you afraid that when you actually have to speak... nobody will understand you?

That's the big problem with learn-at-home French courses. When you don't have a tutor or a class to interact with, there's a good chance you won't speak your French as much as you should. And even if you do... who is going to tell you if your pronunciation is ... errrr ... less than great?

I generally recommend that you spend at least a little time speaking to actual French speakers. But for all those other times, Rocket French comes with a nifty little pronunciation perfecting tool, baked into every audio example in the course.

The Rocket Record tool can be used a couple of different ways. (One way I recommend, and the other... err... your mileage may vary.)

The tool allows you to record your voice as you pronounce words and phrases, and then play it back so you can hear yourself. This is good — you can listen to the voice artist, and then listen to yourself and spot the difference.

On top of this is the option to have the system rate your pronunciation. This is a bit less reliable.  

From what I can see, it looks like it uses voice recognition (like what you have for talking to Siri / Alexa), except it is listening for French. Whatever French it hears (or mishears) is turned into text, which is then compared to the text that you're supposed to be saying. Abracadabra, you get a rating out of 100% based on how close this is.

Sounds good in theory, but in practice I found it a bit temperamental. It's always trying to match what it hears against real French words, so it's not going to be very good at pointing out if your vowels are a bit flat, or your RRR is not throaty enough. If your internet connection isn't super strong, it can miss out whole words or syllables.

You have the option to turn off the rating system inside the tool settings — this is what I've done. Now I just use my own ears to see how close I'm getting.

If you want to give it a whirl before you buy, I recommend that you sign up for a free trial first.

Another thing often missing from home-study programs is feedback, reporting, and that feeling that you're actually getting somewhere. If the nerd in you is itching to be top of the class, Rocket French has a variety of assessments built in to chart your progress.

• Quizzes and tests at the end of each lesson to check whether you've grasped it all.
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• A rating system where you can track how well you've mastered the material in a lesson. This is great for spotting lessons that you could improve on, so you can come back to them later.
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• A community leaderboard, badges, and awards for reaching certain achievements.
  

I would say that Rocket French is suitable for absolute beginners through to reasonably advanced students of French. I've been looking at Level 1 in this review, but there's also a Level 2 and a Level 3 if you're ready to move beyond the basics.

In each level there's enough material here to keep you going for a long time.

• It quickly gets you understanding and speaking real, usable French. If you're traveling to French-speaking destinations and all you managed to get through was the interactive audio course before you left, I think you'd be pretty well prepared compared to the average phrasebook-toting tourist.
  
  
• It appeals to all learning styles. Regardless of whether you're a visual learner, or someone who learns better by listening, by immersion ... they've got all bases covered.
  
  
• Entertaining real life situations. I've found myself laughing out loud a number of times while listening to the interactive audio course ... "Be careful not to confuse "boisson" (drink) with "poisson" (fish)... " etc.
  
  
• Easy to digest. The audio course lessons are around 20 minutes long, which is long enough to get into it, not so long that it fries your brain. The grammar lessons are also pretty bite-sized, and come with loads of audio to practice with.
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• Friendly and engaging — even when you're knee-deep in conjugations.
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• Listening comprehension and speaking practice — covered! These are usually a weakness of home-study courses, but the games, tests and voice comparison feature in Rocket French tackle these areas well.
  
  
• Play lessons on your phone or computer. There's an app for iPhone/iPad and Android devices, or you can use them on your computer without installing any software. The app syncs with the online version, so you can hop between devices without losing your progress. Audio lessons can also be downloaded for offline use.
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• Extremely reasonably priced. At the time of writing this, Rocket French Level 1 was clocking in at under a hundred bucks. It's a one-time purchase, so you're not going to get stung with any monthly fees or annual subscription. You also don't need to pay when they release a new version — all updates are free.
  
  
• 60 day money-back guarantee: If you don't think it suits you or your learning style, or you just don't like it, you can just ask for a refund within 60 days. They're super nice about it. There's no risk of being stuck with a dud here.

• No real gimmicks — Rocket French is basically just a good, solid, reasonably traditional French course with a few technological bits and bobs. It's not a revolutionary new strategy for learning French, and it doesn't really break any new ground — except in the way that difficult grammatical material is explained clearly and empathetically (rather than requiring a linguistics degree just to decipher). But because there are no gimmicks, it also means that Rocket French is more likely to work for a wider range of people.
  
  
• Occasional difficulty getting voice recognition to work: If you're using the app on your phone or tablet you won't have to worry about this, but if you're using the course on a desktop computer it might be a bit fiddly to get your microphone to work when you want to use Rocket Record. (This is because of your browser's security settings.)
  
  There are instructions inside Rocket French that show you how to make it work, but it's easy to miss if you're one of these know-it-alls (like me) who don't read instructions!