Rocket Arabic Review: Is It Worth the Price? (Plus Alternatives)
Kelsey Wetherbee
Published on June 7, 2022
Good introduction to Arabic, but few interesting features
Rocket Arabic is a thorough introduction to Egyptian Arabic. The lessons are helpful because you hear conversations between native speakers. Everything is explained in detail so you won’t get lost. But, there are few additional features, so lessons and activities get a little repetitive. And the price is high compared to other similar courses.
PROS
- Detailed lessons
- Practice listening & speaking
- Lifetime access to the course
CONS
- Only 1 level available (beginner)
- Expensive
- Repetitive practice activities
Table of Contents
Rocket Arabic Overview Rocket Arabic Price Rocket Arabic Review: How It Can (or Can’t) Help You- Challenge #1: Beginning a New Language
- Challenge #2: Learning & Remembering New Words
- Challenge #3: Understanding & Speaking to Native Speakers
- Challenge #4: Making Language Learning a Routine
- Rocket Arabic vs ArabicPod101
- Rocket Arabic vs Rosetta Stone
- Rocket Arabic vs Duolingo
- Rocket Arabic vs Mondly
Rocket Arabic Overview
Rocket Arabic is one of the language learning courses from Rocket Languages. It teaches the Egyptian dialect, which is the most widely spoken and understood. There are 3 types of lessons. The Interactive Audio lessons feature a conversation between 2 native speakers, which the teacher breaks down to teach important vocabulary and phrases. The Language & Culture lessons have written grammar explanations and practice activities. There are also lessons that teach written Arabic.
Rocket Arabic is an effective way for beginners to start learning the language. The audio lessons explain everything and the other types of lessons are helpful, but not quite as developed. However, the price is quite steep for the limited lessons and features included. And since there’s only one level available, it’s only beneficial for beginners.
Rocket Arabic Price
To use Rocket Arabic you have to buy the entire course, not pay a monthly subscription. Since there is only one level for Arabic, it costs $149.95. There’s also the option to pay with a 6-month payment plan, which costs $27.00 per month for a total of $162.00. Buying the course gives you lifetime access to all the lessons.
At first glance, the course seems expensive, but there are always discount codes available, so you’ll never pay full price. For example, with the EARLY BIRD coupon code, you pay $89.95 and save 40%.
It’s difficult to compare the price of Rocket Arabic to other apps because most charge a monthly subscription. Pimsleur is one of the few that charges by the level, not by the month. Other apps with inexpensive monthly subscriptions include Mondly, Rosetta Stone, and Memrise. There are some apps with free content like ArabicPod101 and Duolingo.
Rocket Arabic Free Trial
You can try Rocket Arabic with a 7-day free trial that’s easy to sign up for. You don’t have to enter any credit card information. It’s a limited trial, and you can only access 3 audio lessons, 3 Language & Culture lessons, and 3 Writing lessons.
Rocket Arabic Discount
Rocket Languages ALWAYS has discounts for their courses, so there’s no need to pay full price. When I created my account, I was offered a ROCKETDEAL discount code for 33% off, and then I was offered an EARLYBIRD discount code for 40% off.
Rocket Arabic Review: How It Can (or Can’t) Help You
Getting started with Rocket Arabic was easy. I only had to enter my name and email address, no credit information is required. There are no placement tests since there’s only one level available. After creating your account, you go to your Dashboard, and all the lessons are laid out in a clear order. You start with Module 1 and work your way through the 7 modules. The idea is that you work through the course in order, but you have the option to skip around if you want.
Since there are very few resources outside the lessons, it’s clear what to do next. There is also a Survival Kit that teaches some useful vocabulary topics, such as food, body parts, and days of the week. I recommend jumping ahead to this section after you complete a few of the lessons in module 1. This section is especially helpful if you have an upcoming trip and only a short time to learn some basic Arabic.
Creating my Rocket Arabic account was easy, but learning any new language has its difficulties. There are often common challenges that language learners face, such as knowing where to start and learning new vocabulary. Let’s take a look at how Rocket Arabic handles these challenges.
Challenge #1: Beginning a New Language
Because there’s only 1 level, Rocket Arabic was made especially for beginners and is a useful tool to help you start learning Arabic. The lessons start from the very beginning and don’t assume you have any prior experience with this language. The lessons were easy to follow because everything is explained in English. There’s also a written transcript of what is being said so you can see how the words are spelled.
Challenge #2: Learning & Remembering New Words
Rocket Arabic is very helpful for learning vocabulary. Most of the practice activities focus on remembering the new words and phrases. After each lesson, you can use flashcards to memorize the words. With the flashcards, you can choose if you want to see the Arabic, Romanized Arabic (Arabic words written with Latin characters to help with pronunciation), or both. There are other activities that have you listen to the word, speak the word, and write the word.
Challenge #3: Understanding & Speaking to Native Speakers
Every audio lesson features a dialogue between 2 Arabic speakers so in every lesson you are practicing your listening and understanding. There is also an audio clip of the pronunciation of each new vocabulary word so you can hear how to pronounce it correctly.
Practicing speaking with an app, and not a real person, is a little difficult, but Rocket has some helpful activities. During the lessons, the teacher prompts you to repeat what is said so you can match intonation and pronunciation. I like the dialogue activity that lets you play as one of the speakers. It’s not as good as talking to a real person, but it’s one of the better solutions I’ve seen in a language app.
Challenge #4: Making Language Learning a Routine
Rocket Arabic is an app made for serious learners. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles or cute animations that other apps use to get you to practice. I like the gamified aspect of other apps because it motivates me to take more lessons, but this isn’t a big focus of Rocket. They do have a few things like a leaderboard and points to encourage you to keep up your learning streak.
Rocket Arabic Review: Overall Learning Experience
Overall, Rocket Arabic is a solid course to help you start learning Arabic. The lessons, especially the Interactive Audio ones, and practice activities provided are helpful and easy to follow. The lessons explain everything and break it down into small enough chunks that it’s easy to progress forward without feeling overwhelmed.
By following the Rocket method of listening to each lesson twice and practicing the activities associated with the lesson, I thought I was improving and learning a lot. And when I got tired of the audio lessons, I could switch to a Language & Culture lesson or a Writing lesson.
The other types of lessons are good, but not great. The Language & Culture lessons teach grammar, which is important, but not always the most interesting. I like that these lessons are written since I’m a visual learner and could see the differences in conjugations, or the masculine/feminine difference.
I also liked that every lesson has tons of audio clips to help practice pronunciation. Almost anytime a new word or phrase is presented, there’s an audio clip that you can play and practice with. There are also voice recognition ratings, but they don’t seem very accurate.
Rocket Arabic Review: Areas of Improvement
My least favorite lessons were the writing lessons. I’ve tried some of the other Rocket courses, such as Rocket Chinese, and found that writing course to be much more helpful and interesting. Another good app that can help you practice writing is Write It! Arabic, and it’s free.
The lessons and activities became boring after a while. Since most of the activities focus on learning the words and phrases, they become repetitive. After reading the word, listening, to it, and writing it, I was tired of practicing. Memorization is an effective to learn words, but it’s not necessarily the most exciting. Other apps that are better for learning vocabulary are Drops and Memrise.
The price is also quite expensive. There are always discounts available, but without a monthly subscription option, paying that much for a course might not fit with someone’s budget. Especially when some apps, like Duolingo and Clozemaster offer their content for free.
Rocket Arabic Alternatives and Competitors
If you don’t think Rocket Arabic is the right choice for you, there are other options available. For intermediate or advanced learners, ArabicPod101 and Rosetta Stone have more advanced content. A similar app to Rocket is Pimsleur. Apps like Memrise, Busuu, and Drops offer inexpensive monthly subscriptions. Duolingo and Clozemaster even have free content. Let’s take a look at how Rocket Arabic compares to some of these similar apps.
Rocket Arabic vs ArabicPod101
Rocket Arabic and ArabicPod101 are very similar apps. Both have audio lessons that feature a conversation between native speakers. The Rocket Arabic course is more structured with few additional features offered outside of the lessons. ArabicPod101 has a very loose course structure, but they offer a lot of additional practice activities. Since they are so similar, use the free trial for both to see which you like more. You can also read more about ArabicPod101 in this review, or try it for free by clicking the button below.
Rocket Arabic vs Rosetta Stone
Rocket Arabic has longer audio lessons that explain topics in English. Rosetta Stone has more immersive lessons that are entirely in Arabic. Rosetta Stone offers a cheaper monthly subscription, and for slightly more than the price of Rocket Arabic, you can get lifetime access to all languages available on Rosetta Stone. I prefer Rosetta Stone because I like the immersive experience of having the lesson only in Arabic. It’s also a better choice if you want to learn more than one language. You can read more about Rosetta Stone in this review or try it for free by clicking the button below.
Rocket Arabic vs Duolingo
Rocket Arabic and Duolingo use different approaches to language learning. Duolingo focuses on learning through practice, and Rocket Arabic gives lengthy explanations in English, which takes more time but gives you a better understanding. Duolingo has a free version, but even the Duolingo Plus subscription is inexpensive. Since it’s free, I like to try out a language using Duolingo to see if I’m interested and want to keep learning. If you want to read more about Duolingo, check out this review or try it for free by clicking the button below.
Rocket Arabic vs Mondly
Mondly and Rocket Arabic have different style lessons. Rocket Arabic has longer audio lessons, but Mondly’s lessons are shorter and more interactive. Mondly offers an inexpensive monthly subscription, so it’s the cheaper option. Rocket Chinese is the better choice if you want to have a deeper understanding of the language, but Mondly is better if you want to learn on the go or only have a few minutes to learn, If you are interested in Mondly, you can read more about it in this review, or try it for free by clicking the button below
Rocket Arabic Review FAQ
Rocket Arabic is a good course for beginners. The lessons are easy to understand and follow a logical order. It helps you learn conversational Arabic. But there’s only one level, so intermediate and advanced learners won’t benefit from this course.
Rocket Arabic is a more thorough course that will give you a good understanding of the language. But the lessons can be quite long. Duolingo is better if you want to quickly learn some important words and phrases, but won’t make you conversational.
Rocket Arabic teaches the Egyptian dialect of Arabic, which is the most widely spoken and is understood by many other speakers of different dialects.
There is only one level of Rocket Arabic, and it costs $149.95. There’s also the option to pay with a 6-month payment plan, which costs $27.00 per month for a total of $162.00. Buying the course gives you lifetime access to all the lessons.
About This Rocket Arabic Review
This is an independent Rocket Arabic review, and the company has not sponsored this article. To write this review, I signed up for the free trial of the app and used it for a few hours to thoroughly test its content and features. I also found additional information on the Rocket Languages website to verify my findings.
