Mandarin Blueprint Reviews 680

effective and fun

First I would like to say that the curriculum itself is extremely well done. Phil and Luke clearly know their stuff with respect to language pedagogy. I have tried a number of language learning resources and have usually had concerns that I was either being extremely inefficient with highly guided material or having to cut my own path to be efficient. It is a great relief simply to have a program to follow and not deal with the additional cognitive friction of uncertainty and curriculum building. You just press play and follow the instructions and you will be using a highly efficient and fairly enjoyable system. Learning a foreign language as an adult is difficult and no system can make that not the case, but this one takes as much friction as possible out of the process.

However, the very well-done curriculum suffers from a couple of decisions. First and most salient to my experience is the use of the Traverse application as an SRS system. It is in virtually every sense inferior to the leader in the SRS space, Anki. I have used Anki for years and the stability, ecosystem, feature set, and user experience is top-notch. Much of this derives from the fact that Anki is an open-source application and the entire community is focused on making it a good tool to support learning. Traverse seems to have been built specifically to lock materials into the application and prevent modification. Even more obnoxious is the fact that MB used to use Anki for everything and the videos mention this frequently, so I'm constantly reminded that the system used to use a richer, more stable, and more open software solution. And the founders try to sell Traverse as a solution on the basis that it is more intuitive for users and that this was a user-centric position. I find that enormously implausible. It's probably way easier to keep people from sharing MB flashcards with friends because openness is part of Anki's DNA and closedness is part of Traverse's, but it's annoying and insulting to be told multiple times that not only was the superior option standard for a while, but that switching to the worse one was a pro-user decision. In my seven years of using Anki I have not experienced the number of bugs and poor UX that I have in three months of using Traverse. I get it, guys. You got mouths to feed. But don't expect me to thank you for switching to a significantly worse system as an absolutely essential aspect of your program rather than use the rich, stable, optimized, and open alternative you used to use.

Another thing that is less of an issue but still a bit annoying: the level of self-promotion in the program is a bit excessive. Don't get me wrong: the curriculum is really very good. And maybe all the self-promotion works for them. It seems like a lot of effort and presumably they wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't working. But I was intensely skeptical before I decided to try it because my first instinct with things containing that much self-promotion is that the product can't stand on its own. It really is a good product beyond the annoyance of the Traverse decision.

To summarize: this is a very good Mandarin curriculum from two guys who work hard and know what they are doing pedagogically. It is held back by locking users into an SRS system (which is key to the curriculum) that is inferior in every way to the previous one. It also causes a few eye-rolls on the self-promotional aspect of the product. I haven't met Phil and Luke, but they seem like solid dudes. I'm sure these are very reasonable business decisions and they probably legitimately believe they are doing right by everybody on the decisions. But I would be lying if I said I didn't think they are undermining some percentage of the really fantastic work they have done with these decisions.

I am amazed I have learnt so many characters ( 900+) in 97 days at MBP. I thought it would take me years to reach this. Thank you so much for planning the whole course so well.
I love the way you structure the course - the way you arrange the characters; for example to move from droop 垂 to sleep 睡 by adding the eye 目 makes it so much simpler to learn. Many thanks to Luke and Phil for structuring this course strategically! Kudos!

This online course is extremely structured and well thought out. The creators very clearly have passion for what they do, and it shows in the content. Even though Mandarin is a difficult language to learn, Luke and Phil found a way to dumb proof the course. This allows me, and lots of other people access to the language where other learning models failed in the past.
I got a textbook and started studying for about a week before I discovered the blueprint: absolute waste of time, money, and energy. The blueprint is truly a one stop shop for everything you need to master the language. I didn't have to make a single flashcard from scratch, nor did I have to write pages and pages of notes. All I'm using is my brain, a piece of scratch paper, and my phone. THATS IT.

I couldn't recommend them enough, and if anyone asks me how I learned Mandarin in the future. I WILL NO DOUBT NAME DROP THE MANDARIN BLUEPRINT AND IMPLORE THEM TO TRUST THE PROCESS

Engaging, comprehensive and well-presented approach to learning a language so completely foreign to English that it can be hard to sustain your motivation.

The Hanzi Movie Method works! I clearly wasn’t aware of the power of visualization. Before I’ve tried to learn Chinese characters the traditional way, but I never succeeded to get past the basics. With the Mandarin Blueprint it feels like I will be able to get to the next levels. My goal of fluency seems more realistic now. I’m not yet there though.

This is a wonderful method which has helped me memorised a bunch of characters.

I’ve just completed level 1 and I can already say this method really works! I had tried some apps for learning Chinese before. I also tried podcasts and YouTube videos. I got rather disappointed. Nothing seemed to stick to my memory, I was getting really frustrated and almost gave up. Then I found Mandarin Blueprint. What a surprise! At first, I didn’t put much faith in it. It seemed like too much effort was necessary for creating props, remembering actors and sets... But the thing is, it’s easy! It’s fun! And, best of all, it really sticks to your memory! When we get the hang of the method, things start to roll more and more easily. Plus, the legwork you put in in the beginning, really pays off later. It’s like an investment with compound interest. Another thing I’d like to point out is the flexibility that Luke & Phil allow in the method in terms of choosing characters, sets and props. I’m not a native speaker of English, I speak Portuguese and live in Brazil. I was able to use Brazilian actors, props with names in Portuguese, everything customized to my own reality and my fond memories. That makes thing even more memorable. Well, this review is running too long already. Thanks a lot guys, for this awesome method. See you in the next video.

Great framework, fantastic explanations, and responsive community.

I was drawn to Mandarin Blueprint because both Luke and Phil were great explainers. Both were articulate in English, my base language for learning foreign languages. Luke even had a cute British accent. Both also struck me as impassioned learners and teachers of the Mandarin language. Accumulating years of experience learning and teaching the language, they have distilled the best practices for acquiring the language fast, and more importantly, for making it stick.

It really helps me learn Chinese not just by speaking but also reading and writing. I can see that I've improved, especially in pronunciation which is a very big help to start learning grammar. They've provided a lot of free learning materials which is too good to be real to be honest. Overall, it is worth it. <3

These guys have made a really comprehensive and fun program for learning Chinese. I already spoke a bit of Chinese and was more concerned with learning to read. They do teach simplified Chinese and not traditional. So if you are learning for living in Taiwan, you will also need to connect the simplified characters you learn here to the traditional characters in Taiwan.

I really love how you start by getting the right methods in before going to really deeply learn the language, long term this is so helpful.
Iam nearly finished with the MB Lite course and it is a really great experience, love you Guys!

The content is quite good. The free tier gives you full access to the full first 2 phases of the program and part of phase 3, so it is a great way to find out if you like the content. It was very effective for me to learn, and I have learned the first 104 characters over the course of less than a month, putting in on average around an hour a day (or possibly less). One spot they could improve is the emails. They send a ton of emails (be it the ones through skool, traverse, or from their team directly) and it got to the point where some days I was getting 8 emails in a day. That is way too much. That's the only major frustration I've had so far.

It works, the memory palace technique works. You just have to trust the process - I can now recall 50+ characters with the correct pronunciation, meaning and strokes. 10/10 Recommend

I started taking lessons on Mandarin Blueprint 3 weeks and I'm impressed with the method's speed and efficiency! I started from scratch and, so far, I learned about 100 ideograms. Their method helps students remember things that otherwise would seem totally random. It also helps building the habit of studying mandarin daily. I will continue to take lessons with them and see how far I can go

I really appreciate the foundation Mandarin Blueprint gives and then builds upon it. It is a curriculum that gives you all the tools and the community for motivation. They have thought through how to best teach people Chinese. I needed this for getting serious and investing in my Chinese language journey. It is money well spent.

Mandarin Blueprint is the only thing in the world that gives the phrase from Zero to Hero meaning.. One moment you are thinking ,this is crazy why am i making movies the next moment you are like wait a minute i can read these Chinese Characters. The structure they use to teach Chinese language is out of this world.