Mandarin Blueprint Reviews 680

These guys and this community is the greatest! If in your heart of hearts, if your intent is true and you have a desire, love, passion, fascination or intrigue for learning mandarin. Then do yourself a huge favor and get in here! I'm so greatful for Mandarin Blueprint for Luke and Phil they are very cool, wicked smart, highly funny and fun, humble, personable, and phenomenal teachers, salt of the earth people! If you don't want to learn mandarin these are not the the droids you are looking for... sorry I'm not really a review writer, only something this good could get me to write one!

You Guys, and Your Team, Rock! Will definitely recommend Mandarin Blueprint to anyone interested in learning Chinese that crosses my path. Thank-You!

Very good for establishing a foundational understanding of mandarin characters and words.

systematically fleshing out the skill of remembering.
It's been lovely.
My Mandarin journey started with formal education, but I'm so far from that now. I feel like I have some minimal access to the language, but I'm just not where I want to be.
This system has helped.
Its helping with the characters, and s9me new words in there for me, but mainly character recognition.

Perfect course, learning Chinese finally clicked for me

It's incredibly good from A to Z. Its fun, its structured, its the best.

Matriculating into Mandarin Blueprint has been a life-changing experience. I've studied foreign languages back in the day using the tried-and-not-so-true method of drilling vocab words, learning sentences here and there, using textbooks, etc. Sure, I learned German, but it took me the better part of 8 years and I'm still not that great at it.

Now, I'm doing something I never thought possible - learning Mandarin Chinese to fluency on a daily basis, and I ain't no spring chicken - I started up when I was 62! I must say that it's really not that difficult, regardless of age, when you use the correct methodology and methodics. From the Hanzi Movie Method to the memory palaces to the timed repetition of Traverse flashcards to the Pronunciation Mastery course to the Phrase Vault and more, I'm learning at an astonishing rate. And it's fun.

Luke, Phil, and the Mandarin Blueprint team are a kind, caring, giving, supportive group. And the MB community - holy cow, what a diverse wealth of experience and wisdom. I know with 100% confidence that any question or concern I have, whether it's with the language, my understanding of the course materials, or simply a biz issue (that I've created in my own head), someone will be there to support me within 24 hours if not the the same day.

My experience so far - I'm nearly at the stage I call "relaxed conversational" in only 10 months - has been wonderful. Joining the Mandarin Blueprint community has truly been a life-changing decision that I'm so glad I made. I look at it this way: If I had not joined up when I did, how much Mandarin Chinese would I know today? Exactly.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Phil, Luke, the Mandarin Blueprint team, and the MB Community - you all make my life better.

Onward!

I've been trying to learn Mandarin for over 30 years. I've hired tutors, used online native speaker sites, watched YouTube, enrolled in university courses and of course, Duolingo...NOTHING has gotten me to the next level of comfort in speaking, recognizing tones, comprehension and READING/WRITING like Mandarin Blueprint. This actually WORKS. I've recommended to a friend and will continue to recommend

I had already studied Mandarin for 3 years when I came across some Mandarin Blueprint videos on Youtube that really helped with my pronunciation. Then I came across this fascinating way of visualizing Chinese characters which can also help you remember the tones and exact pronunciation. I was skeptical at first, but when I visited their site and took the benefit of their free introductory course, I began to really see how well the Hanzi Movie method can work. It still took some getting used to, especially since I had already learned over a thousand characters. But for the new characters I had never learned before, I was amazed at how quickly I was able to remember how to write and pronounce each character, as well as remember the meaning. Unlike before I was able to remember and distinguish many similar looking characters. Now I'm hooked on the method and I can't see any other good way to learn Mandarin characters, especially in the short time that it has taken so far. I highly recommend their course. I think it's well worth it and it can save you a lot of grief trying to learn Mandarin by rote the old-fashioned way.

Mandarin blueprint, is an innovation!
I was trying for many years to be a self-taught student of mandarin, but I reached a point that I could do more... Then I found a video on YouTube with Luke explaining so well the language that I wanted to learn, and that picked up my interest. After a while I started to use the MB lite and I saw all the effort that both of the founders have put to this project.
Is a great experience...
And the best of all... it's a big community that takes you in, and help you grow with them learning not only the language, but customs and everyday things.

I am so satisfied that I also joined The MB pro....

After years of struggling with learning Chinese in China (HSK books, teachers, different apps, speaking in everyday life in different regions with different dialects) I've found a method that works! Not just that, it's fun, so it's easy to build a habit that lasts.

The memory palace seems weird at first and you have to initially invest quite a bit of time to learn the method and apps but once you get to the actual learning it's very clearly laid out and easy to follow. The speaking and listening kickstarter alongside the vocab building curriculum was a gamechanger when it comes to fluency in speaking.

Again, it works! My vocab retention has drastically increased, I'm speaking more and I'm developing a natural feeling for sentence construction and flow without obsessing over opaque grammar rules.

Can't recommend it highly enough!

Luke and Phil have created an amazing and most of all UNIQUE method!
I am extremely grateful to have found you guys. I've started this journey with my first character few years ago while living in Shanghai and finished it today (November 24th 2025) with character 3050 in Germany!
I can only say one last thing: you must try their method!!

Luke and Phil have made learning Mandarin Chinese a breeze, compared to other methods I have tried in the past to learn other languages. There is soooo much content in the course and I want to keep coming back to learn something new. I’m on level 13 and already recognising quite a lot of characters when I read random stuff. You can see they’ve put so much work into this course and it’s really gelling with me. Thankyou guys

I started with the pronunciation mastery course which is just awesome. After using it, my Chinese went from not being understood to being recognised even by AI. I’m now well into the Blueprint. It’s a fun, easy way to remember characters (both meaning and pronunciation), and you quickly get to read full sentences without pinyin. The Pro student community adds to the encouragement and Phil & Luke the founders of Mandarin Blueprint have additional videos and live conversations with members which offer useful, well-researched and informal resources, tips, and coaching. Most importantly you get a method to improve your Chinese consistently toward fluency. It starts a bit slow in my opinion, but quickly picks up, and retention is three times better than anything else I had tried before. I thoroughly recommend Mandarin Blueprint.

Only regret is not finding Phil and Luke's method of learning mandarin earlier. The time spent is really worthwhile because the method helps what I'm learning sticks and when I need to recall I just have to go through the method that is being taught and I can retrieve what I want without much effort and really quickly.

Hello, everyone! Luke & Phil, thank you so much for this learning website! I originally heard about MB from your videos, they really helped me! That’s when I decided to check the website out. Mandarin has never been easier. I have studied some basic stuff, like sentence structure, hanzi, etc., but it’s good to refresh the stuff you already know and strengthen it. The methods so far are really useful, even the videos have helped me! I highly recommend Mandarin Blueprint to anyone who is interested in learning Mandarin Chinese.

I have dabbled with learning Chinese, Mandarin specifically, for years. It was frustrating and I would give up. Finally, with Mandarin Blueprint I am learning words and reading simple sentences from those words! Don't get me wrong, it is hard work but the methodology is sound. This program has a good structure for learning and a great community that supports each other in that process. I can actually picture myself reading and speaking Chinese within the next couple years. Furthermore, when I have had to reach out specifically with questions, the team has responded in a timely way. This program is excellent.

After several months of using the Mandarin Blueprint, I am already reading entire sentences of only Chinese characters. I am having trouble believing it myself. This method works extremely well, and I recommend everyone learn Chinese this way. It's a daunting task, but you'll be surprised how easy and natural it becomes!

Currently living in China and working my way through this course. It's been a huge help in leveling up my Chinese quickly and I know that I've only just started to reap the benefits of the MBP method.

Some pros and cons here with this program. Lets start with the pros (ultimately a yes when given a choice of platforms/choices to choose from):

1. There is plenty of comprehensible input to learn from! No shortage there! This is great because you don't have to go elsewhere to obtain reading/listening skills.
2. The Hanzi Movie Method used to retain Hanzi characters works! Great way to learn (not just memorize) Hanzi characters!
3. Extensive vocabulary to be learned!
4. Learn at your own pace with no pressure to move fast. The course is set up to move at your convenience so you can learn as fast or slow as desired.
5. The co-creators, Luke and Phil, have great personalities and do a fantastic job conveying messages when explaining how characters are used amongst other things. Great communication skills!
6. I am now a Chinese speaking American! I can't get enough of that feeling and because of that I will continue to pursue the course.

Now for the cons (not a reason to turn away, just some flaws I've noticed):
1. The Chinese culture of humility and being humble is constantly preached throughout the course but the creators, 2 white males (one being from the UK- the OG white male) charge in-house 4 year university tuition rates if seeking a tutor for help. Community college tuition rates solely for the online courses. The reason being is that fluency is promised 3x faster along with a method of teaching that "doesn't exist in other schools" (not having been to every Chinese teaching school, so can't confirm for every school in the world). A bit pricy when viewed from this perspective. All surrounded by a teaching method. The amount and type of content can be replicated in any other online course.
2. The sequence of teaching is a bit contradicting. Acquiring the language via speaking/listening (immersion) is emphasized yet you start out by learning the equivalent to the alphabet in Hanzi. It was acknowledged that children learn to speak and comprehend by listening before going to school, yet here we are learning parts of Hanzi characters and full characters that are never used alone as words. I get that this helps with translation if struggling to remember. ALSO: quite a few common words (喜欢 & 告诉 to name a couple) are not taught together as 1 word! Why learn literally 1 half of a word in 1 lesson and the other half a few lesson later with the full word?
3. The Traverse App, in my experience (and I can't stress that enough), has too many glitches and/or coding/errors to rely on completely. Anytime I've contacted the owner/support the only thing that happened was my problem being acknowledged, never fixed. Sometimes the pictures show up, sometimes they don't. For some reason the font changes ever so often making it difficult to read the characters when you're used to the basic font (problem for beginners getting familiar).
4. There are some Vault sentence flashcards that have implied words in the English translation but don't show up in the Mandarin portion. Example: "wo keneng yao wan dian zou." which translates (according to the card) to "I might be a little late today." The word for today is "jintian" but not in the Chinese part! While normally implied and understood in a conversation, as a beginner you're paying attention to every word trying to translate it. It is confusing when you're given the English to translate only to find you were "missing" a word. Quite a few cards are like this forcing an extra step of memorization if you want to get the translation correct. Many other small typos in the translations with these cards. Nothing prohibiting you from learning.
5. Lots of motivational speeches and pressure from the creators to stick with the program. I suppose I'm just not part of that target market since I'm extremely self-motivated to begin with. I had to unsubscribe from the emails since that's all they were. Felt a mild tone of a guilt trip if not reviewing every day. Its fine to take a day or 2 off, just don't make it a habit.

In conclusion, paying for the online course if worth it. You can use LanguaTalk for an AI assistant for speaking/typing practice. Its made specifically for language learning. Then, you can take what you've learned to iTalki or a local Chinese restaurant and they'll tell you you're correct "more or less" (personal preference), but never wrong. An outside source to perform a quality check would be beneficial. I see room for improvement while acknowledging I have come leaps and bounds from self-studying. The downloadable stories help a lot!