Thanks MB team!
Been learning Chinese on and (much more) off for years. Used a different app for three years and still couldn't say much. Started Mandarin Blueprint four months ago, have not missed a day. Their method and course encourages you to build a strong foundation with (a) daily reviews; (b) new vocab & then review that; (c) pronunciation practice; (d) speaking and listening; (e) sentence creation and recollection by both reading and typing pinyin and recognition of characters; and more recently (f) graded reading short paragraphs, (yes that is right I am able to read and understand eg 80-90% of their selective paragraphs after just four months). On the one hand you need a lot of time to do all of these steps and only a small proportion is spent acquiring new vocab so progress feels slow, on the other hand all four skills (reading, listening, speaking and writing) are building the base for fluency. I only wish I had discovered them three years ago when I started the other app... If I can continue to put the hours in and the motivation up, I estimate being able to speak freely in 2.5-3years. Highly recommended if you are serious about learning Chinese.