Rocket French Review

There are a ton of reviews for Rocket French online today. However, most of the people who wrote these reviews just summarized other reviews they found on the Internet and have never even seen the course or have any knowledge of the French language! I care about you, my visitors to learnfrenchvideo.com, and decided to actually buy the course myself and write a genuine Rocket French review to determine whether it’s worth buying the course or not.

Overall, I was extremely impressed in that Rocket French covers a huge amount of material in a very fun and organized way that will get you speaking French. In fact, if you have gone through the lessons on my site then moving onto Rocket French would be a very logical next step as they do a better job as they have a more comprehensive course teaching conversational French.

What Will I Get?

Rocket French has over 70 lessons covering everything you will need to know to learn to start speaking and understanding French fast. The course covers a wide variety of subjects that you will find very find useful. Subjects covered including basic greetings, tourism and travel vocabulary, asking directions and finding your way around town, food and restaurant-related vocabulary, shopping and clothing-related vocabulary, dating and meeting new friends, sports and hobbies, days of the week, countries, numbers and much more!

What is great about Rocket French is that all of the lessons are online. That means you do not have to download any software or wait to receive any CDs or DVDs in the mail. All of the lessons are in the form of podcasts. That means that the audio MP3 files are stored on their site and all you have to do is click and listen. If you want you can also download the lessons to your PC or MP3.

There are a few online reviews that say Rocket French does a bad job teaching grammar. Actually, I don not think the people who wrote these reviews ever saw the course. It does indeed offer a lot of grammar lessons. In fact, Rocket French does a much better job covering grammar than I do here on learnfrenchvideo.com.

Rocket French has lessons covering the following subjects in grammar:

• Alphabet and Pronunciation
• Masculine/Feminine (Naming Things)
• Definite & Indefinite Articles
• Singular & Plural Pronouns
• The Verbs Avoir (To Have) & Etre (To Have) & When To Use Them
• Demonstrative Pronouns (This & That)
• Gender (Masculine & Feminine Nouns)
• Verb Conjugations
• Past Tense
• Reflexive Verbs
• Future Tense
• Making Negative Sentences
• Making Comparisons
• Important Keys (Y and En)
• Adverbs

Furthermore, Rocket French does a great job helping teach various kinds of vocabulary lists. Within the lessons you’ll find material covering the following:

• Counting
• Telling Time
• Question Words (Who, Where, Why etc.)
• Direction and Location Words (Left, Right, etc.)
• Adjectives
• Talking About Money
• Slang
• Work & Employment
• Reading A Restaurant Menu
• Family Members
• Sports
• Formal Vs. Casual Conversation Distinctions (Tu vs Vous)

How Is The Course Structured?

Rocket French is divided into three main sections: Stage 1, Stage 2 and finally Survival Kit.

Stage 1 contains four main sections:

1. Meeting, Greeting, Foot & Drink
2. Travel
3. Getting Around Town
4. All About Food

Section 2 Contains five main sections:

1. Retail Therapy
2. Family & Friends
3. Activities & Hobbies
4. In Review
5. MegaFrench Software

Section 4, the Survival Kit, covers a ton of vocabulary:

1. Pronunciation
2. Days of the Week
3. Countries
4. City
5. Clothing
6. Colors
7. House
8. Beginners Numbers
9. Advanced Numbers

How Are The Lessons Structured?

Each section is broken down into about eight individual lessons. As you’ll see each section has a TON of material. Each lesson is divided into two parts: Interactive Audio Course and Language and Culture. In the Interactive audio Courses you get the chance to listen and speak. In the Language and Culture sections the teachers, Paul and Claire, cover lots of vocabulary that you can apply to learning about and understanding real-life cultural situations in France. This is also where you’ll find the majority of the grammar lessons.

For example, in lesson 1.4, All About Food, the Interactive Audio Course lessons cover supermarket, kitchen and restaurant vocabulary while the Language and Culture section covers some necessary grammatical rules such as how to make a negative sentence, making comparisons and the future tense.

How Do The PodCasts Work?

Each lesson has two podcasts. The first podcast is the teachers going through a dialogue word-by-word and explaining it. Then, the second podcast is just the dialogue. This is useful because you can play the second only-dialogue podcast over and over until you get a good feeling for the vocabulary and sentence structure.

 

How Can I Measure My Progress?

At the end of each lesson you will find a quiz. Here you will be asked questions about what you have learned. After each quiz you can see your score. If you answered some of the questions wrong you can go back, review the lesson material and take the quiz again as many times as you want until you master the material.

At the end of both Stages 1 and 2 you will find a Certificate Test. Here Rocket French will test you on all of the material you have learned in the proceeding lessons. Sometimes you will be asked to listed to a dialogue and answer the correct answers. Again, you will be presented with a score when you finish. If you get too many answers wrong you can go back and try again.

How Can I Know If My Pronunciation Is Correct?

With Rocket Record you can compare your voice to that of the native speaker. It is a great tool which will allow you to enhance your pronunciation ability. Towards the bottom of each page for each lesson you can click on “Rocket Record”. Simply hover your mouse over the word you want to practice. Listen to the tutor’s voice, record your own and find out the accuracy of your pronunciation to that of a native speaker!

What Is The “Your Motivation” Section

Let’s face it – learning a new language is hard. If anybody told you that you can do it “fast” or “instantly” they would be lying! The “You Motivation” section is a series of articles that you can read to help you learn faster and get better results. Here you can read about what kind of learner you are (visual, sound-oriented, etc.), how to develop a language-learning plan and set goals, how to build self-confidence and get your head around grammar, how to have more fun with the langauge, how to improve your memory, and the true secret to learning a foreign language (thinking in that language).

Members’ Online Forum

As a member of Rocket French’s website you will have access to the online forum of other French learners like yourself. Currently, the forum has over 12,000 members covering over 3,000 topics. Here you can meet friends with similar interests, ask questions and get them answered. The forum has sections covering French culture and travel, conversation, vocabulary and grammar. I found the grammar section to be extremely useful as it covers lots of tricky subjects such as pronouns, masculine/feminine, reflexive verbs, past tense and much more.

What is “My Vocab”?

Rocket French has a new feature called “My Vocab”. This is designed to help you build your own vocabulary list. If you find any words to be extra tricky or just want to make a note of them for your own memory you can use this feature. On every page of the site you can double-click your mouse over any word. Then, you will see an ABC appear. Click on that and you can make a personal note for yourself. Before you know it you will have your own personal vocabulary list.

Any Criticisms For Rocket French?

1. One criticism for Rocket French is that it does not cover sentence structure enough. However, this is not such a bad thing. The reason I say this is that many beginner students get bogged down and confused by sentence structure. Indeed, this can slow the learning process a lot. Rather, Rocket French puts a strong emphasis on learning vocabulary, speaking and listening comprehension – making it an excellent choice for people who want to start speaking fast.
2. Rocket French has two instructors, Paul and Claire. One criticism is that while Claire is a native speaker, Paul is not. At first I noticed that he had a few issues with his accent (particularly one hard “u” sound). However, after listening to several lessons I realized that he is indeed a fantastic teacher and still think Rocket French is a good course.
3. Lastly, another issue that I had was that all of the lessons are taught with audio-only and do not have video. While video is an excellent tool for students who are more visually-oriented learners it is not 100% necessary for learning a new language. Again, I would not let this issue hinder you from getting the course.

Conclusion:

Rocket French is an online course designed to get you speaking French fast. After buying the course and doing a complete review I conclude that it’s definitely the “real deal” and not a scam at all. The course has a ton of material covering everything you need to know including vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and much more. The podcasts are fun to listen to and make the whole learning process easy. An added bonus is the forum which allows you to connect with other users and get your questions answered quickly. I would definitely recommend anybody who is looking for a good solid online French course to buy Rocket French today.

Review written by David I.

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