Everybody’s trying to teach you a language. We may be in a golden age of language learning, what with all the apps and online instruction out there feeding into an increasingly interconnected world of tourism and travel. But do you want to know a secret? The most successful of the swanky, new language learning apps I’ve used are underpinned by decidedly old-fashioned teaching concepts.

Take Rocket Languages. Its core is built around a listen-and-repeat model of audio lessons that last for 45 to 60 minutes. But compared to all the flashy, gamified competitors it’s more effective. We just need to talk about that price…

rocket languages at a glance

When you plunk down $150 to 450 for a lifetime subscription to Rocket Languages, you know you’re signing up for something intense. And when you learn that an individual lesson can last for an hour, the point is driven home like a clavo by a martillo. But the concept of introducing new words and grammatical concepts and then weaving them to subsequent lessons via repetition, to drive home the lessons into your long-term memory, works well. If you’re serious about learning a language, it should be near the top of your radar.

pros and cons

Pros

• Builds a more solid foundational knowledge than gamified competitors
• Repetition method is effective at aiding memorization

Cons

• 45–60-minute lessons are quite long
• Only 13 languages available
• Far more expensive than the competition

how i tested

When I test a language learning app I like to practice with a language I know somewhat well (Spanish) and one in which I know fairly little. In this case the latter was Russian. Mixing the two allows me to test the app from a couple of angles. For Spanish, I can tell if the app is steering me wrong or simply using outdated slang and vocabulary. For Russian, I could see how effective the app was at teaching me from a nearly blank slate, as many people will approach the app with their chosen language.

blasting off with rocket

I’m not aware of another popular language learning app that demands of its practitioners an unbroken 45–60 minutes when they sit down to start a single lesson. Most of the competition, such as Duolingo and Memrise, want only 10 or 15. Rocket Languages splits each of its 13 languages into three sub-sections of beginner, intermediate, and advanced. I’d call that oversimplified, if only because I believe it’s impossible to approach true fluency through any app or classroom. You need to get out into the world and speak to real people to achieve that.

But however pedantic I’m being, Rockets’ organization is clear and concise. For example, an early lesson in Spanish comprehensively breaks down too often-confused verbs for “to be”: ser and estar. Rocket could try to teach them separately or have the learner pick them up indirectly through conversations, but Rocket correctly deems learning the distinctions important enough to get their own lesson, juxtaposed against each other and with clear explanations throughout of when to use one or the other. Rocket is perhaps the best-organized of the language learning apps I’ve used.

I enjoyed Rocket’s inclusion of occasional cultural lessons that break up the bread-and-butter lessons. They come at just the right time to provide a mental smoke break and relax the brain, and since they’re just photographs and passages there’s no pressure to “pass” them. Pimsleur, the app closest in concept to Rocket Languages, doesn’t do that.

Even though Rocket Languages relies most upon the audio lessons, it works in written lessons to a greater extent than Pimsleur, whose non-audio lessons are more afterthoughts. All my years of (attempted) language learning have taught me that Rockets’ (and Pimsleur’s) audio-first model is the best way to learn (if, at times, duller than games), but seeing words on the screen from time to time is useful, especially for more visual learners. Rocket incorporates just enough of it without distracting it from the main audio-first mission.

It’s just so damn expensive.

Let’s Talk About That Price

We’re living in subscription hell, in which everything is a subscription. Not just the news (again), but clothes boxes, snack boxes, dog toy boxes, and about 30 television streaming apps. So hearing that Rocket Languages operates on a buy-it-once model could’ve been a refreshing change of pace. But the price of Rocket Languages is so high that you’d have to use it for several years before reaching the break-even point by which you’re saving over most other language learning apps that charge a monthly fee.

If you just want Level 1 of a language, you have to fork over $150. That won’t get you very far toward fluency. You can buy Level 1 and 2 for $300. Purchasing all three levels, the last of which Rocket Languages promises “an advanced conversational level,” costs a wild $450. That’s a ton of money. Is it worth it? Honestly, I’m not so sure. It isn’t like Rocket Languages is several times better than the best of its competition. I’d recommend that you check out the free trial, try out a few competing language learning apps, and then if you find that Rocket sparks something for you that the others don’t, only then proceed with it.

alternatives i recommend

Of any competitor, Pimsleur matches most closely to Rocket Languages’ setup. Rather than the bite-sized, gamified lessons of Duolingo or the “learn like a child” angle of Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur is built around a core of 30-minute audio lessons of listen and repeat, much like Rocket Languages. Pimsleur’s 51 languages beat out Rocket Language’s 13 languages easily, as it includes such lesser-offered languages as Swahili, Haitian Creole, and Tagalog. At $21 per month, it’s also far cheaper than Rocket Languages. It remains my favorite language learning app.

Check out my Pimsleur review.

Here’s a unique one. iTalki breaks with the standardized lessons and instead matches you up with real, live people all across the world with whom to practice. You teach them your language, and they teach you yours. You can also pay professional tutors for more typical lessons over video chatting. It’s an interesting setup, but one that varies drastically because the people are the largest variable.

Read my iTalki review.

will rocket take me from know-nothing to fluency?

I don’t think any app, book, or class can take you to full fluency. At some point you need to begin engaging with books, movies, television shows, music, and most of all, real people in real, non-staged conversations.

But I do think that Rocket Languages, unlike some other language learning apps, is better at starting you out from knowing nothing of a language. The lessons are structured so that they lay down a simplified but crucial base of grammatical knowledge and basic vocabulary at the outset so that you could conceivably begin holding practice conversations fairly soon after starting.

I’ve found that Duolingo and Rosetta Stone, because their approach is more scattershot, aren’t as good for laying down a solid base when you approach a new language as a complete novice.

Can I speed up or chop up the lessons?

You can’t and you shouldn’t, respectively. The audio lessons run from 45–60 minutes. I know it’s a real chunk of time to pledge. Even Pimsleur’s 30-minute sessions feel like a commitment. But stopping part-way through a lesson and picking it back up later feels wonky, and the lessons just don’t sink in like if you finish the whole thing in one big gulp.

the bottom line

Rocket Languages is not for the merely language-curious. You’re not going to complete a lesson as a time-waster while you wait for your flight at the airport. It takes commitment—not just to sign up for its three-figure price, but also to commit yourself to a 45–60-minute lesson.

But the rewards are a system that works better than most competing apps that rely upon making lessons “fun” and flashy, and so it’s at least giving the free trial a shot.