Rocket German Review
What is Rocket German ?
Rocket German is a German learning course. Unlike many other courses, it can be downloaded over the Internet. It took me about 25 minutes to download it with a broadband connection.
You can also download it with a dial-up connection but this would take more time I imagine. You can also get a hard copy version shipped to you but this is far more expensive than the download version and the content of both the download and hard copy are the same.
This is what you get with Rocket German :
- An Audio Course
- An Interactive PDF course
- 3 educational games
- Access to a forum
- Follow up lessons from time to time
The rest of this review will cover the Interactive PDF course as the other components are covered in other posts.
What level is Rocket German ?
The courses caters for beginners. It will take beginners through to intermediate levels and onto an advanced knowledge of the German language.
How does it teach German ?
- The course comprises 31 lessons.
- The first 15 lessons deal with the basics of the German language
- The next 10 lessons are intermediate level and build on the technical aspects of the language.
- The last 6 lessons are more complex and start to tie in all the information you have learned from the previous lessons.
- Each lesson deals with the same topic as the corresponding audio lesson.
- Each lesson can take around 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on the skill level of the student and the knowledge of the topic being covered.
Is Rocket German Scam?
The
topics of the lesson are introduced along with any new German words.
The student will read through the introduction. Any German words can be
clicked on and the audio for the word will be heard.
The the word is clicked you will hear the English equivalent, then the German. Then there is a pause and the German is spoken again. This gives the student a chance to speak the German and practice what he/she is learning.
More examples will be given of the topic and examples of how it is used. A variety of written and multiple choice type exercises conclude each lesson.
The Random button can be pressed at any time and a German sentence or word from the current lesson will be spoken. This can allow the student to practice conversation and comprehension for this particular lesson. It can also give the student a bit of control over the lesson.
Any other teaching methods used ?
The three games are accessed through the PDF course :
- MegaVocab – vocabulary recognition, match one of 6 pictures to a word picked at random by the software
- MegaVerbs - verb conjugation, conjugate a verb in the correct person and tense. There are 20 questions within each game and the software can select any verbs it has in the system.
- MegaAudio – comprehension, listen to audio of a word or sentence and guess which of the 4 pictures represent the audio.
You can use these games simply as a bit of fun or you can consolidate any knowledge that you have gained in the lessons.
A set of flashcards are also provided. These are a set of pictures with the German/English meaning underneath. There are 250 of these cards and they need to be printed out to use.
Rocket German vs Rosetta Stone
Two
self study courses that are popular at the moment are Rocket German and
the Rosetta Stone German course. This article will compare these two
course in terms of their quality and how they teach the German language
to students.
To begin with, these courses are quite different in their approach to teaching.
Rosetta Stone German tries to immerse you in the language. Thus you will not see any English cues when the lessons begin. Everything happens in German and you have to figure it out. This is a bit like immersion German, where you might be in a German speaking country and have to get by speaking German. Or even as you learned your mother tongue, purely by hearing the words and making some kind of connection to the meaning of the work.
A lesson will consist of a series of questions. Each question would consist of 4 images/photographs and a button that can be pressed to hear audio. The audio would be either naming the image or describing what was occurring in the image. It is then your task to select the image that corresponds to the audio.
You would go through the whole lesson, that would be on a particular theme, say colors. At the end of the lesson you would be given a mark on how many questions you got right. If you got all the questions right you could advance onto a harder level.
The Rosetta Stone course uses this method to quite an advanced level. It is not just about learning vocabulary. You will be asked questions that involve sentences, which will help you to learn nouns, adjectives, verbs, verb conjugation and adverbs.
They also use the same method for recognizing written words, practice writing and have a way to analyze your speech patterns to help improve your accent. The number of lessons is vast and will take you to an advanced level but you have to buy the complete set of 3 courses to get to this level.
Rocket German takes a slightly different approach. Basically, Rocket German have tried to put a combination of teaching methods into their course. I think they have taken elements from Pimsleur/Michel Thomas by having an audio component to the course.
They have an interactive PDF course along the lines of a traditional book course. And they have even used similar ideas as Rosetta Stone with their games section.
So the audio course is 31 15-30 minute lessons. The lessons deal with basic German through to everyday situations like being in a restaurant or shopping.
The audio follows the narrator, a native English speaker and her native German speaking friend. The English speaker introduces the lesson and does the teaching by illustrating points and asking you questions. The German speaker speaks the German parts so that you get to hear an authentic accent. You are advised to say the words or sentences after him aloud.
The end of the lesson involves recapping what has been learned and then answering some questions posed by the narrator. You are given time to answer aloud and then the German speaker gives the answer.
The second part of Rocket German is PDF interactive course. This course has lessons from beginner through to intermediate/advanced levels. This is where you are taught grammar, shown how verbs are conjugated and introduced to new words.
You will learn more about reading and writing in German. There are a number of questions at the end of each lesson to help you consolidate your learning.
The course starts out with the elementary aspects of German and gradually builds to real world situations in the later chapters.
The Rocket German games are called MegaVocab, MegaAudio and MegaVerb. As mentioned before, they are similar to the Rosetta Stone method in that they use pictures and have to answer a series of questions.
In the case of MegaVocab and MegaAudio, you have to guess which picture is correct after hearing the written or spoken German word. In MegaVerb, you are asked to type in the correct conjugation of a series of verbs in terms of the tense and person that is speaking.
You receive a mark at the end of each lesson. With this information at hand you can select to go to the next topic or repeat this topic again. A useful feature of the vocabulary game is that you can add you own pictures/questions. This makes it possible to have a huge selection of vocabulary to work through.
There is also two sets of flashcards that you can print out and play with other German language students.
There is a forum where you can ask questions and practice with other people using the course. From time to time the Rocket German team will send you a new follow up lesson.
Good points of Rosetta Stone German
- Unique way of learning – no books or writing things down.
- High quality images and generally professional looking system.
- Track your progress through a scoring system.
- Can analyze speech but you need your own headset.
Bad points
There are three separate products that take you from beginner to advanced. Each one is quite expensive and the whole set is considerably more expensive than Rocket German and many other types of courses.
This approach is very light on formal instruction, particularly in grammar. This might not be suitable for some people that feel more comfortable and confident by knowing why as well as how something works.
Good points of Rocket German course
Value
for money – you get an audio course that can be used separately from
the other parts of the package. The pdf interactive course is also a
course in itself, that teaches the finer points of the language and
grammar. The games are useful but not as wide ranging as Rosetta Stone.
The forum and follow up emails with extra lessons are good to keep you
motivated and develop a sense of community.
Send out follow up lessons that can keep you motivated and have a forum where you can ask questions and talk with other students.
Bad points
Some of the photographs in the games are not always clear and you have to use the show English word button from time to time.
Rocket German Reviews Verdict
I think the Rocket German course represents good value. You get an Audio and Ebook course and 3 software games. The forum and follow ups can help you to get help and stay motivated as you learn. Although it is not easy learning a new language, Rocket German can certainly make the task easier provided you are consistent and focused about learning German.
