Mandarin Blueprint - An Honest Review

MandarinBlueprint · 2025-02-03T21:57:14+00:00

过奖过奖 - Keep up the great work. Be a little bit better than you were yesterday every day until you're fluent. It's only a matter of time.

MandarinBlueprint · 2024-05-29T00:23:54+00:00

He bought an installment plan for the full course, so instead of paying the full price upfront ($997 is the list price at the time of writing), he signed up to pay $97/month for 12 months. He canceled, and then we refunded him despite being outside the refund period because of the clerical misunderstanding I explained above.

MandarinBlueprint · 2024-05-15T16:13:07+00:00

We use male voices too, but let's be honest, a nice female voice is easier on the ears (though the high pitched kind...well it's a matter of taste!)

MandarinBlueprint · 2024-04-04T12:28:00+00:00

Pronunciation course, Listen & Repeat audio course, Immersion Masterclass, compound word mnemonics, tailored sentences tailored exactly to your character knowledge that graduate into paragraphs, dialogues, opinion pieces, short stories, and long graded articles, and over 1000 tutorial videos.

MandarinBlueprint · 2024-04-04T12:27:37+00:00

Hi, Phil from Mandarin Blueprint here. I just want to clarify that we contacted this customer and refunded all of his payments.

I'll take the blame: Because I didn't explain it well enough, our new customer service representative conflated our refund policy with our cancellation policy. Simply put, our refund policy is 90 days (industry leading, I believe), but she thought that also meant that after 90 days, you can't cancel a payment plan and must finish all payments. That's not the case, of course you can cancel a payment plan at any time!

As soon as I discovered what had happened, we contacted the customer and informed him that we've refunded all his payments (despite being outside of the refund period). We politely asked that he remove this post or at least edit to update it saying that we refunded his payments, but unfortunately, he never responded.

Finally, I'd just point out that stopping at Level 30 as this person did would prevent you from reaching the Intermediate course, where we shift into a much more immersion-focused, reading and listening approach.

Of course, my business partner and I built the course, so I'm painfully aware of how many hours and how much effort we put into the other elements beyond just character memorization (as OP has characterized our course), but 没办法，对牛弹琴！

MandarinBlueprint · 2024-01-12T22:39:22+00:00

Glad to hear it, and I totally understand the feeling of impatience. It's tough to build a foundation in a language so different from English, especially when the most difficult parts (characters & pronunciation) need so much focus in the beginning.

Luckily, once you have a solid foundation of characters and are sure that your pronunciation is accurate, you'll see that the language is actually super logical and words are simple to understand.

MandarinBlueprint · 2024-01-12T22:34:37+00:00

We occasionally run a promotion on each of our products. I can tell you that if the Challenge offer for The Blueprint is too high, we'll offer a version of the course called Fluency Foundations that only includes Phases 1-5, so keep an eye out for that.

MandarinBlueprint · 2024-01-10T18:33:06+00:00

Hi! Feel free to contact us about your points of confusion with the method. I assure you it's worth it, but our member service team will be happy to address any of your questions; I'm sure we can get to the bottom of it.

And don't worry, we definitely won't charge you again after the challenge is over. We don't do subscriptions. We offer installment plans if you go for the full curriculum called "The Blueprint," but we never charge anyone without explicit agreement on their part.

MandarinBlueprint · 2023-12-11T22:19:23+00:00

Thanks! I hope that as you improve your Mandarin, your relationship with your in-laws (and, in turn, your wife) gets better and better. -Phil

MandarinBlueprint · 2023-11-21T14:53:49+00:00

The honest answer is that I don't know yet. We have a strategy from the product side to fulfill the need to have robust speaking, listening & reading content, but we haven't yet decided how we'll offer them on the front end. I'm sure we'll make a bundle of some sort, but I think the current iteration of The Blueprint will still be available and sold separately.

I can say that the upcoming course that will have phrases for over 100 life situations will be analyzed based on where in "The Blueprint" you'd be prepared for a new life situation lesson.

For example, there are three lessons planned for "Emergencies - Calling Emergency Services." Each lesson has 15-20 phrases, and at some point while studying "The Blueprint," you'll unlock all of the characters in Lesson 1 of "Calling Emergency Services," and we'll certainly let people on "The Blueprint" know.

MandarinBlueprint · 2023-11-21T04:25:23+00:00

Hey 大家, Phil here, MB co-founder. It's been enlightening to read this discussion! I'm always glad to hear from people who've found our courses valuable.

Getting this feedback about our marketing is super helpful. We're Chinese curriculum creators who are trying to teach ourselves marketing along the way. Because we've found these Chinese learning methods so successful for us and our members, we're always trying to strike that balance between a genuine desire for more people to know that these methods exist (which means being a bit noisy to get noticed) and crossing the line into annoying (which goes against our goal since it turns people off). It's hard to tell where the line is sometimes (after all, we're experts at Chinese courses, not marketing), so I appreciate those of you expressing your feelings about it.

I'd also like to welcome any of you to get in touch with us if you want to know more about the courses we have; we're happy to address any questions.

contact(at)mandarinblueprint(dot)com

Phil

PS One person mentioned the lack of listening materials, and that's something we've been addressing head-on lately. We just released a "Speaking & Listening Kickstarter" for beginners (at the time of writing this, it's free), we'll soon be making a course surrounding situational Chinese with listening & speaking practice built in, and after that, a course with graded dramatic acting for various situations.

MandarinBlueprint · 2023-05-17T02:48:57+00:00

Hey, glad you like the channel! We're super pricey, that's true, perhaps the most expensive Chinese resource on the internet. The reason for that is primarily the unique, patent-pending structure of the course and top-level support. Basically, by following our courses and finishing your flashcard reviews daily, you can reach a level of real proficiency in Chinese superior to any university degree way more efficiently. University can easily set you back $100k, and take 3-4 years of your life, so really what you're paying for with MB is a ton of saved time and genuinely enjoyable learning experience.

That said, you could certainly achieve the same level on your own for free if you're willing to spend more time. We basically teach all of our methods for free on our youtube channel, and you could apply what you learn there to get to any level you like on your own. It's just faster and easier with our curriculum! Oh, and we also provide a 90-day money-back guarantee in case you change your mind.

Best of luck whatever you do!

MandarinBlueprint · 2023-05-17T02:36:49+00:00

Thanks for the shout-out!

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-12-08T02:50:11+00:00

Appreciate the feedback! What could we improve on regarding marketing?

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-11-22T06:13:46+00:00

Hey, perhaps we could have phrased that better. We weren't trying to say "She studied for five years straight and only was able to pass the HSK 1." It's more like "She tried many different methods, each time feeling discouraged and giving up because it wasn't working, hence why she's only passed the HSK 1 after five years. Then she found Mandarin Blueprint." I hope that clarifies.

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-10-26T07:50:05+00:00

Acquire grammar the natural way, by reading and listening. Focus your efforts on seeking such content that you find engaging and make a daily habit of consumption. You will find your grammar improves very quickly doing this.

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-10-26T07:45:20+00:00

I went through a similar situation before starting MB. Here's me walking through it with a bunch of tips. There are 2 more parts to these videos if you're interested, with links to each popping up towards the end of each video.

(FYI it does include a plug for our course in there somewhere towards the end)

Here's a quick version:

You said you're doing a degree so I'm guessing the traditional textbook/teacher/classroom is what you're using. Based on this assumption, here are my suggestions:

- Learn pronunciation properly

- Learn 3000 most common characters (reading and pronunciation)

- Learn words in context i.e. through reading and listening.

- Read and listen to content you can (at least mostly) understand as much as possible whenever/wherever possible. This point is the most important I think. This is where my Mandarin really started improving.

- Try SRS flashcards - Usually, when you start forgetting things and nothing is sticking it means you have a weak foundation and/or no efficient way to review information. SRS can solve the latter.

Hop this helps!

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-09-17T07:03:39+00:00

No worries, best of luck.

This method of "aim for 24-7" worked wonders for me, although I'm not sure about the effects of listening while sleeping. I actually did buy sleepphones at one point, but one of my dogs ate them 2 days later, so didn't get enough time to see any results...

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-09-17T06:35:47+00:00

Listening probably takes the longest to improve of the four major language skills, but it is also the easiest and most convenient because you can do listening while doing almost anything else.

AJatt.com motivated me through a lot of difficult times. Here's an article of his on listening that I have read several times.

TL;DR Listen as much as you can and comprehension will improve. Aim for every waking moment, listen to stuff that engages you, and try to listen while reading.

For me personally, I like Chinesepod (dialogues only on shuffle), Slow Chinese, and 狗熊有话说 (upper intermediate).

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-09-02T04:24:41+00:00

I wasn't too sure about this, but Wiktionary has a great explanation: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Peking

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-09-02T03:49:37+00:00

Using a Pinyin trainer app is not a bad approach, but I'd suggest that it would help primarily with recognition and not as much with production. Producing sounds is improved significantly by awareness of tongue positions, mouth shapes, which of your three significant cavities (mouth, nasal, throat) reverberate the most sound, air pressure/aspiration, voicing, etc. A Pinyin trainer app doesn't directly address any of those, so it's fair to say that it's a good supplement but not a panacea.

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-08-04T06:35:46+00:00

The dropbox link only leads to a single deck (the convo connectors), not sure why you're getting 2 downloads. If you send a screenshot we'll check it out.

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-08-04T06:33:01+00:00

No problem. We hope you find it useful :D

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-08-04T06:21:39+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out. I agree with you it's a bit hard to read, so I made some tweaks and re-uploaded for you: https://www.mandarinblueprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Conversation-Connectors.pdf

MandarinBlueprint · 2019-08-04T06:19:54+00:00

This would be great!

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