Rocket Spanish Review: What It Does, What It Doesn’t, and How to Use It

Some of The Good:

You speak immediately: You start speaking immediately, right from the get-go in the very first lesson, so you could actually have a real conversation, although it would be rather short, with a native Spanish speaker right after having completed your very first lesson.  You begin saying complete sentences and phrases straight away within the first 5 minutes of the first lesson.  Also, the second you buy it you get access to the course because the whole thing is online (and downloadable) so you could actually have your first conversation with a native Spanish speaker (presuming you have immediate access to one) just 25 minutes after you buy it (the lessons are about 25 minutes in length).  You can get started right this very second, I like that.

Native speakers teach the lessons: They use actual native Spanish speakers to teach the lessons, which means that your pronunciation, accent, and choice of words are exactly what a modern Spanish speaker would use, which means that you will sound just like a native Spanish speaker when you use the Spanish that you’ve learned.

Rocket Spanish was started and designed by a native Spanish speaker: A native Spanish speaker, Mauricio Evlampieff, is actually the founder of Rocket Languages, designer of the Rocket Spanish course, and is also one of the native speakers that teaches the lessons.

Entire course is online, available the second you sign up: The entire course is available for your use on their website, so you can just log in from anywhere and get going, plus the entire audio portion of the course can be downloaded so that you can do the audio lessons from anywhere that you can take an MP3 player: jogging, in your car, at work, etc.

Useful, modern, day-to-day Spanish only: It focuses completely on the Spanish that you are most likely to use when actually speaking to native speakers on a day-to-day basis in a Spanish-speaking country. There is no dry, boring, useless, textbook stuff about “how many shirts Juan has” or anything.  This means that you learn a ton of Spanish that you can immediately start using with native speakers, even right after your first lesson.  All of it is actually useful in the real world, they’ve trimmed all the fat and included only Spanish that’s used on a frequent basis by native speakers so that you not only learn that specific type of Spanish but you don’t end up having your time wasted learning useless stuff, either.

The Bad:

I’d like to just mention the few negatives of this course that I noticed, they’re not a big deal, but I wanted to mention them straight away so you’d be aware…

1. You can’t put the entire course on an MP3 player or CDs: you can put the audio tracks, which is the meat of the course, on an MP3 player or CDs, but several important parts of the course (transcripts, quizzes, forum/support, vocab tool, etc.) are only available via the website.  Now, I’d much rather have all this stuff than not, so I don’t mind, but I thought it was worth mentioning because I know a lot of courses consist only of audio tracks.

2. You get really good reading comprehension practice if you’ll use the transcripts and vocab tool, but there’s no actual writing practice.  This is something that I personally like using workbooks for anyway, plus most people are a lot more concerned about learning how to actually talk to native speakers, writing can come later.

3. They don’t offer you a way to find native speakers to practice with, though that’s really not a big deal and something I’ve been doing with language exchanges for years now–a language exchange is a website that enables language-learners who speak different languages to connect and practice with each other, for example: someone who’s a native English speaker and who wants to learn Spanish will get on a language exchange site and find a native Spanish speaker who wants to learn English, they will then agree to talk for, say, 15 minutes in Spanish and 15 minutes in English via Skype (free online telephone service)–so you end up helping them with their English in exchange for them helping you with your Spanish. It’s a very cool system, and the best sites are free: I go into much more detail about how they work and which ones are the best in my newsletter if you’re interested (you can sign up on the upper right there).

Some More Stuff I Liked:

Excellent instructions: First thing at the very top is a 8 1/2 minute video introduction showing you where everything is and how to use it so that you don’t, like with so many websites I’ve dealt with in the past, end up frustrated and trying to figure out how to do the most basic tasks.

You learn a ton of Spanish in the 30 days it takes to complete this course: The audio portion has over 12 hours of material and each lesson averages 25 minutes in length and is done entirely with a native speaker, so you really do end up knowing significantly more Spanish after each lesson than the one before.  Each one uses a modern, real-life situation so you learn language skills that you can actually use in actual conversation with native speakers.

Transcripts included: Transcripts of every conversation are included so you can look up anything you hear to see how it’s spelled and so you can use these transcripts to help with your reading comprehension.  Each lesson also includes a list of important new vocabulary for you to learn that you can integrate with the vocab tool they provide called ‘My Vocab’ (covered below).

Cultural lessons and quizzes: Each lesson also includes extra audio clips and lessons on culture in various Spanish-speaking countries that will help you avoid common mistakes and misunderstandings, such as in the 2nd lesson where you learn how to greet people: it’s explained that people often kiss next to the side of the face in greeting. Each lesson has a quiz at the end that allows you to test yourself and make sure that you sufficiently understand the material before moving on.  These quizzes at the end will tell you what percentage you scored and allow you either accept that and mark the lesson as ‘complete’ or go back and re-do the lesson; you are able to examine the quiz immediately afterward to see which questions you got right and wrong and what the right answer was. A progress tracker keeps track of which lessons you’ve done and how you scored on the quiz.

Fantastic vocabulary learning tool: There’s also a “My Vocab” tool which allows you to create your own word list of Spanish words that you want to learn and review (they make it really easy by allowing you to just double-click on any word and it causes a menu to pop up that offers to add the word to your vocab list for later review–this works anywhere on the Rocket Spanish site, so yes you can actually use it during a lesson).  It allows you to add any word, the translation for it, and any notes you’d like to make about it to your vocabulary review list, so that you can review them later whenever you want however many times you need to.  You can include the translation and any notes you’d like to add such as example sentences that use the word.  I found that this is a FANTASTICALLY useful tool because it lets you quickly note any words you’re having trouble with or that you’d like to review, and when you’re learning a new language there are often several of them per lesson.  This ensures that you never forget anything you learned, it helps you learn 100% of each lesson by letting you jot down anything you’re having even the least little bit of trouble with for later review.

Makes learning Spanish fun: There are also tons of learning games that you can play online on the Rocket Spanish website from inside your account homepage.  There are 3 different types of games: one for learning new vocabulary, one for listening comprehension practice, and one for learning to use the right verb tense.

Ongoing help for any questions you have: They have instructors (who are native speakers and trained and experienced in teaching Spanish) in the forum available to answer questions and help you, plus you can talk to and socialize with other learners and the forum mostly consists of beginning Spanish learners just like you, and is very active with over 12,000 members currently.

You retain 100% of the material and are never allowed to forget anything you previously learned: All lessons are based around the principle of mixing in learning new material with reviewing old material so that you don’t ever forget it, with newer material being reviewed more frequently.  This way, you learn ALL of the material and don’t forget anything: by the time you’ve completed the course you will have learned all the material from lesson 1 on, you won’t have forgotten anything because all material gets reviewed multiple times over a period of many weeks, so everything taught in the course will be at your immediate disposal from memory when you need it, and that’s a LOT of material to have that you can work with.

Tons and tons of ‘how-to’ articles on lanuage-learning: The ‘Motivation Center’ includes 26 different articles plus 4 quizzes at the end.  Most of the articles are of the “how to” variety, they explain:

• How to figure out what type of learner you are and how to adapt the course materials to your particular learning style (2 articles)
• Developing your own plan/system of learning Spanish (5 articles)
• Building confidence through perfecting your pronunciation and dealing with grammar (4 articles)
• Memory tricks and tips for learning vocabulary (3 articles)
• And some bonus tips (4 articles).

Point is, you’re really not left in the dark with regards to WHAT to do and HOW to do it, it’s all completely and thoroughly explained for you, they really do hold your hand throughout the whole thing.

Edit: A quick PS!  Several people have asked me if you can get a refund “if it sucks” (that’s how it was phrased, haha): YES.  I checked into this very carefully, Rocket Spanish is sold via Clickbank which requires all of their merchants to offer an unconditional 60 day guarantee: you can get a refund at any point within 60 days of purchasing it for any reason whatsoever or no reason at all (you’re not required to provide a reason), in fact it’s actually Clickbank that processes the refund, not the merchant, Clickbank does the refund automatically right when you request it and the money is taken out of the merchant’s account and counted as a refund. If you’d like to see it yourself, just scroll down the order page (that’s the page you end up on after clicking “Click here to proceed to order form”) and you’ll see the 60 day guarantee mentioned towards the bottom.

If you think this is something you might be interested in, I highly recommend that you:

Check out their site (here)

to get some additional information, and/or sign up for their completely free 6-day course which gives you online access to a selection of Rocket Spanish Premium interactive audio lessons and Spanish language and culture lessons.