Rocket Spanish Overview
Learning a new language can be challenging, but thanks to the millions of online resources available to us, we can all have the opportunity to become bilingual. The only problem is determining which resource will be the best for you. In this article, we’re going to take a look at Rocket Spanish and provide you with an in-depth review that will help you determine if this is the right program for you.
Rocket Spanish is an online program from Rocket Languages that offers you the opportunity to learn Spanish through several types of lessons including audio and written lessons.
This program offers well-structured lessons that provide plenty of opportunities to practice Spanish out loud, which is one of the best ways to learn how to speak comfortably. The lessons also provide information about the different Spanish speaking cultures and how the language differs between cultures.
This is a quality educational program and if you stick with it you will improve your Spanish skills, but the lessons may not be as interesting as you would hope. Let’s go over my initial pros and cons and then I will discuss the lessons in a little more detail.
Pros
Cons
Rocket Spanish pricing
Level 1 | $99.95 |
|---|---|
Levels 1 & 2 | $249.90 |
Levels 1-3 | $259.90 |
Languages offered: English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, Korean, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, French, Italian
Course Structure For Rocket Spanish
As you can see from the price list, Rocket Spanish comes in three levels which you can buy separately or as a single package. If you purchase all three levels you will get over 370 hours of lesson time as well as more than 10,000 phrases to practice with voice recognition.
Completing all of these lessons may not make you fluent, but it will certainly give you a strong knowledge of the language. When combined with other learning techniques, it may be enough to get you to the level you need in order to speak Spanish comfortably.
Each level is split into six to eight modules which are divided into three types of lessons: Audio Lessons, Language and Culture Lessons, and Survival Kit Lessons. Let’s take a look at each section.
Interactive Audio Lessons
The audio lessons start with a quick review of previous lessons and then give you a little information about what you should expect from the current lesson. After the quick review, the hosts will have a short conversation in Spanish which will be the basis for the lesson.
Level 1 audio lessons contain one Spanish speaking host and one English speaking host. Levels 2 and 3 have two Spanish speaking hosts and one English speaking host. The hosts interact with each other throughout the lesson and give you cues for when you are meant to speak aloud along with them, giving you lots of opportunities to practice.
These conversations will teach you conversational Spanish as well as give you valuable lessons about grammar and the more complex aspects of the language. The hosts speak very clearly and often repeat key phrases to help cement the lesson.
Throughout the lesson, the host will say, “How do you say,” and pause so that you can respond. The benefit of this is that it teaches you how to think about how you are responding instead of just memorizing and repeating phrases that you don’t truly understand.
The audio lessons are basically like a story, so there are serious elements and funny moments. Unfortunately, sometimes the conversations can seem overly scripted and a bit cheesy. They do become more complex as you progress but do not expect them to be anything more than silly little conversations.
There is also a very repetitive element in which the host says, “You should have said,” After each pause in which you are meant to respond in Spanish. This means you can expect to hear, “You should have said,” dozens of times per lesson.
Although these elements may be a major turn off for some, many users find the inconvenience negligible and some even find the repetition helpful, it’s a point of personal preference.
Many users cite the “Play It!” section of the audio lessons as their favorite portion. In this section, you choose which of the hosts you want to be and then go through the conversation again with you speaking the lines of your chosen character.
The program records what you say and rates your pronunciation throughout the conversation. Although the recording is helpful because it lets you hear and perfect your pronunciation, the audio recognition ratings are a bit faulty.
The program allows you to choose the level at which it judges your pronunciation, but there does not seem to be much differentiation between levels and the ratings are not always accurate. This is not a problem unique to Rocket Spanish, it is pretty common amongst most voice recognition programs, so just take the ratings with a grain of salt.
Once you have completed the lesson you can review the conversation and dialog, going over the keywords and phrases. There is also a section called “Extra Vocabulary” where you can go over the words or phrases that may not have been the focus of the lesson but are still important. You can also play the conversation by itself to practice listening in Spanish.
Rocket Spanish Reinforcement Activities
Many learning specialists say that repetition is the key to learning and Rocket Spanish takes that notion very seriously. With the Rocket Reinforcement Activities you can review the lesson in five ways:
Flashcards
Everyone is pretty familiar with the concept of flashcards and how helpful they can be. The benefit of these flashcards is that even though each lesson has a set of flashcards that goes with it, you can customize which ones you need and which ones you think are no longer necessary.
When you first open the flashcards section you can choose which language you want to have on the “front” of the cards. Once you have reviewed a flashcard you can rate it. At the bottom of that card, there is a rating system, easy, medium, and hard. If the card contains a word that you are very familiar with you can rate it as easy and it won’t come up as often.
If you go into the tool section, you can even create your own set of flashcards to practice with later on. This is especially useful if you have a particular subject you’re working on or a group of words that you’re struggling with.
Hear It! Say It!
As the name implies, this section is all about hearing and saying the words you have learned from that day’s lesson. You can play the audio of a word or phrase and then record yourself saying that phrase.
Just like in the “Play It!” section, the voice recognition is a little dodgy, so do not rely on it too much for useful feedback in terms of how it rates your pronunciation. With that in mind, this activity can still help you to isolate words and sounds that may be challenging for you.
Hear It! Say It! also allows you to rate each word or phrase as easy, medium, or hard to help further customize how the Rocket Reinforcement Activities work for you.
Write It!
In this section, you will learn how to spell all your newly learned Spanish words as well as learn the importance of accent marks.
First, you will hear a word or phrase and then you write it out. If you have made any errors, the mistake will be highlighted in red so you can easily see what you need to correct.
Using special characters on an American computer can be tricky, but Rocket Spanish has a section that will show you how to bring them up so that you are sure to have the tools you need to complete this activity correctly.
This section also allows you to rate each practice phrase as easy, medium, or hard.
Know It!
Know It! helps to ensure that you truly absorbed the lesson by giving you English phrases that you then repeat back in Spanish. What you say is recorded and rated based on your pronunciation.
Remember, the rating system is not a perfect science, but that does not take away from the importance of this activity. Not only does it help you practice your pronunciations, but it also helps you to begin translating on the spot.
Like the other activities, you can also rate each word or phrase in Know It! to reflect how difficult it was for you, further personalizing your activities in the future.
Quiz
This one is pretty self-explanatory. It’s just a short quiz about what you should have learned from the current lesson. It allows you to listen to the starting conversation again and then answer some questions about it.
On the upside, although it contains all multiple-choice questions, the answers are not too obvious. Many of the answer options are quite similar meaning that you really have to pay attention to get the right answer.
On the downside, the quizzes are only five questions long which may not leave you with much of a sense of accomplishment.
CULTURAL LESSONS FOR ROCKET SPANISH
The Language and Cultural Lessons focus more on grammar and teaching you about different Spanish speaking cultures.
The language lessons are similar to the audio lessons, except that everything is written out instead of in the audio form. These lessons contain a lot of helpful grammar tips and tricks which will make a huge difference in how well you truly understand the language.
Although learning grammar rarely sounds fun, these lessons are well written and contain recordings to assist in your learning process. Just like with the audio section there are plenty of chances for you to record yourself speaking Spanish.
The Cultural Lessons contain written lessons about Spanish speaking cultures and countries in Latin America. They provide some interesting insights that you may not have considered before.
Including lessons about these cultures is pretty genius considering that speaking the language is only a fraction of what you need to know to function in a Spanish speaking country. Unfortunately, the cultural lessons are very short and some are severely lacking in depth and detail. Some lessons are as short as 300 words, not leaving much room for anything of real worth.
Rocket Spanish Survival Kit Lessons
The third and final lesson section is Survival Kit Lessons. This section contains vocabulary word lists that focus on specific subjects such as shopping or parts of the body.
These vocabulary lists coincide with the audio lessons, so you will have some context for the words, but these are just more extensive lists of words that you will want to learn. The lists give you the ability to listen to and record yourself repeating each word or phrase.
The drawback is that learning long lists of words without a solid context is not always helpful. Some people have no problem learning this way, but it can be a struggle for others.
Is Rocket Spanish Worth Buying?
Everyone learns in different ways, so it would be impossible for me to say without a doubt whether this lesson plan would be worth buying. What I can say is that it has its pros and cons.
Pros
Cons
As I already mentioned, this is a quality language program that will improve your Spanish skills if you knuckle down and work hard. The focus on grammar is one of the biggest points that makes this a good program for anyone who wants a truly in-depth understanding of the language.
The downside is that some users may find the dull and repetitive nature of the audio lessons off-putting, meaning that they wouldn’t use the program to its fullest potential. Many users still love it though, so it may still be worth trying out.
Rocket Spanish offers a free trial that you can check out without providing any payment information. If you enjoy the trial, you can try it for 60 days and if it turns out that it isn’t the program for you, they will refund your money, no questions asked.
Rocket Spanish Alternatives
If Rocket Spanish doesn’t sound quite right for you, but you are still looking for an online Spanish program, check out these great alternatives.
Baselang
Baselang is an intensive Spanish course that guarantees that you will be speaking conversational Spanish in a month. They have multiple plan options to fit your learning style. For $149 a month you can have one-on-one Spanish lessons from a professional teacher anytime you want.
When you sign up for Baselang you will get a 7-day trial for only $1.
Pimsleur
Pimsleur teaches language from a slightly different direction by skipping grammar and going right to conversational speaking. This may be a helpful program for those who are just trying to pick up some language skills from an upcoming trip. Try Pimsleur absolutely free today for 7-days. If you decide to keep it they offer unlimited lesson access for $14.95 a month.
Speechling
Want a little professional help when it comes to your pronunciation? Check out Speechling. Speechling is a service that allows you to submit recordings of yourself speaking and have them critiqued by a native speaker. Speechling has a free version that offers a lot of great learning tools and they also have a paid version for when you’re ready to step up your game.
If Rocket Spanish doesn’t sound quite right for you, but you are still looking for an online Spanish program, check out these great alternatives.
Rocket Spanish Review: Final Thoughts
Just like any learning resource, Rocket Spanish has some good points and some less than stellar points. In the good points category, it is a comprehensive program that offers a lot of learning resources and activities. On the downside, some learners will find the lessons dull and a bit repetitive.
The best way for you to know if this program will work for you is to try it. You can use their free trial or simply purchase the program and take advantage of the 60-day guarantee. The bottom line is that this is a good program that offers the knowledge you will need to learn Spanish, it just isn’t right for everyone.
