RocketGermanReview.com

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.

How is a lesson taught ?

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.

What is good about the course ?

The course builds from beginner to advanced. It will give the student a complete grasp of the German Language at the end of the course.

The verb conjugation game is useful, as learning the forms of the verbs can get quite boring and tedious. The game can alleviate this boredom.

Random button is good for adding a bit of spontaneity to the lesson. This is useful if you have done the lesson more than once and need to freshen it up a little.

What is bad about the course ?

The pictures in the MegaVocab game are not always intuitively clear about the meaning. This can make guessing the words quite difficult at times. The English word can be displayed if this happens but doing this makes it too easy.

You can only improve your pronunciation by listening and repeating the audio, no feedback is given by the software as to how your accent sounds.

Any bonuses ?

A good way to get a taster of the course and how it works is to try the free 6 day course. It should help you decide if Rocket German is for you and you will learn a bit of German along the way.

Once you have bought the course, you will be sent the Rocket German newsletter every fortnight. The newsletter has a new lesson in each issue.

Summary

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.

Go to the Rocket German website for more details and testimonials.