Advice - Starting from N5ish knowledge

yosh10 · November 23, 2024, 1:41pm

Hello there - joined Bunpro this week coming from Wanikani, decided to give it another try at learning Japanese after spending the last 15 years or so on and off with the language.
I never went past the beginner level, passed the equivalent of N5 back then (when JLPT had only four levels) but failed N4 one year later, and never got really serious at learning again for an extended amount of time. Due to personal circumstances I do have more free time now and learned about WK, but because of its limitations (no grammar) I searched for an complementary tool and this is how I heard about Bunpro.

So for those who are already up there and/or have also started with some basic knowledge (N5-ish), I’d really wanted to hear a few opinions - how did you approach Bunpro, especially in the beginning as there are quite a lot of very basic lessons, but at the same time it would be good to review some topics I might have forgotten? How many points of grammar/vocab per day would it be advisable to start with, at least until things start getting harder and I feel like I’m learning new stuff or remembering ones I had forgotten? I’m currently doing 2 grammar / 10 vocab a day but grammar feels too easy at least in the very beginning, I’m not sure if I should speed up or skip lessons or just progress as it is because SRS do pile up given my WK experience.

casual · November 23, 2024, 2:28pm

If you are already familiar with a good chunk of N5-N3 grammar from all the exposure over the years, it might be an idea to add a few items from each level each day. This way hopefully you find something new and exciting in N3 or N4, and also quickly back-fill/review N5.

My favorite pace is 9 items per day, because you get a satisfying dark mark in the “new grammar per day” heatmap.

I wouldn’t skip anything with “mark as mastered”, and would just go through the SRS normally. If something is truly easy, it takes little time to review.

jrmr50 · November 23, 2024, 2:29pm

Depends what your objective is. Is it to ‘do bunpro’ or to learn Japanese grammar? BP has been most beneficial for me when I’ve used it to adjunct other ways of learning (textbook, online classes, extensive and intensive reading), rather than being the way of learning in and of itself (if that makes sense).
I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking “solely doing apps == learning Japanese”
Don’t rush. You might get through grammar points, earn badges and get that dopamine hit from that, but its a separate thing from ‘learning Japanese’.

What does that even mean ‘learning Japanese’ - it means different things to different people.

There are different skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) and different objectives (reading manga, watching anime, travelling Japan, living in Japan etc, playing games, passing JLPT N*) - different skills suit different purposes.

Anyway, I don’t have any wisdom and my opinion is no more or less valid than yours.

Walk your path and you will figure it out. Mine has changed a lot over the past four years and I find myself both further forward and more behind as I wander aimlessly through the intermediate plateau, simultaneously feeling like I know nothing but have come a long way.

Ugh such a philosophical post, must be the combination of the tea of cup and caramel fredo frogs.

Anyway more Kitsun reviews to do and light novel reading to combat.

ihatethislanguage · November 23, 2024, 3:50pm

I’ve had lifetime on Bunpro for probably over 4 years now, but never actively used it till recently. I don’t really use Bunpro for vocab, only for grammar, and I try to learn around 3-9 grammar points a day. Sometimes when I find a grammar point that I’ve encountered before and want to review/relearn, I would add that to my review list too. I would like to add that I have studied Minna no Nihongo about from end of 2018 till around March of 2019 with an italki teacher, but since it’s been a long time and I haven’t been actively using what I learned, I forgot most of the stuff, so I started over. I also took lessons in person for about 6-7 months around 12 years ago, but they were terrible. However, I didn’t pay for them, so that was cool.

For N5, I use this playlist with ToKini Andy+Game Gengo’s Genki series (All in one) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjFjJi2bXNa7u-tOOwZ7gxLBhSps2fiNk&feature=shared and then review the grammar point that I learned from the vids on Bunpro. I don’t like using the textbooks as I find it boring to sit through compared to watching YouTube vids, but technically I learned most of my grammar in the order of the textbook. They also sometimes like to explain things a bit further than the textbook, for example, how to make it more casual/informal, and they also give plenty of example sentences. Also, I try to make sure to keep a high streak on both Wanikani and Bunpro. A few times a month, I take lessons on iTalki for casual conversations only, as I feel it’s way more common than polite/formal speech. It’s used between friends and family and I see it a lot in anime and the few mangas I’ve read. It’s also nice to sometimes go to vrchat and speak in Japanese a bit, although I don’t do it often since my vocabulary and grammar is still limited. It is also nice listening practice.

yosh10 · November 23, 2024, 5:11pm

Thanks みなさん for sharing your experiences - it gave me a few ideas to test and organise my learning journey with Bunpro from now on.

That is so true and thinking about it even I couldn’t clearly answer this question to myself. But for now I’d say focusing on passing N4 and N3 as short-term goals while building a fundamental knowledge as I prepare for the tests would be a good enough starting point.

amberglade · November 23, 2024, 5:16pm

I restarted Bunpro after the pandemic having a grammar level of not quite n3 and knowing about 5k to 7k words. After getting a fair way into n3, I kept noticing that there were gaps in my knowledge of n5 and n4 grammar, so I went back and added those before moving on.

The nice thing about Bunpro is that you have a lot more freedom to study what suits you than on Wanikani. If you know the n4 and n5 grammar really well, you don’t have to study them and can just move on.

If something is tedious or difficult to the point that it interferes with your motivation, that’s an indication that you should try something new.

I would suggest using Bunpro along with some kind of immersion technique. I recently started using mpvacious, texthooking, jp mining note, yomitan, and Anki to make cards for shows that I like. I get pitch accent audio, a picture, the source audio clip, the sentence with word frequency information for the word being studied, and multiple definitions in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. I find it easier to remember words in the context of a story with visual and audio cues.