I feel like I’m missing something with Bunpro, because it feels like I could just be using Anki instead.
For me the initial “teach” is ineffective. WaniKani, for example, gives you a kanji or some vocab, then suggests a mnemonic to help you remember.
Bunpro seems to just dump a concept on you and expect you to remember it. Getting it wrong repeatedly in reviews doesn’t really reinforce anything. So am I doing something wrong (or not doing something at all) at the acquisition stage?
Well, I’m not having trouble using Bunpro, but I’m don’t use it alone. What I do for grammar is:
I also add vocab for my reviews and do Bunpro’s reading practice
Are you…
I used to just skip all this stuff when learning new grammar points and ended up feeling the same as you. But I found that availing myself of ALL of the resources Bunpro has to offer makes it more worthwhile and makes the grammar stick better.
Highly recommend reading everything out loud if possible, I find it helps me piece everything together. Definitely agree with making sure you use everything Bunpro offers, please do check out the external resources they can be super duper helpful.
The beginning is hard so it’s okay if it’s difficult, but it’s hard to say if you’re using it wrong without knowing what you’re doing, where you’re at, or how long you’ve been stuck.
I went into bunpro knowing almost zero grammar whatsoever, struggling with the most basics concepts, and am now doing the N2 grammar without much difficulty at all.
In the beginning I really was just smashing my head into a wall. Things barely stuck, I was slow, and nothing really made sense. I did end up reading a bit of taekims grammar guide, found it incredibly boring and difficult to absorb such a long document (but I do think it’s a good one, probably) even going through little by little each day, so I instead watched the first 12 lessons of cure dolly on youtube (I did one per day honestly) to get the basics down, powered through conjugations with the cram function, and just read a bunch of manga/vn with word lookup tools. It was painful. Slow. My comprehension was awful and it took a very long time to get through my choice of entertainment, but I persisted. Slowly got used to some of the grammar points I’d learned, reinforced my kanji and vocab knowledge, and got much faster at reading in general. It’s okay to not understand or if things don’t stick well yet. I still have those moments, but they are vanishingly more rare.
Continuing reading I kept doing the reviews and 2-4 new lessons, every day. I smashed cram on every grammar point I struggled with for N5/N4, particularly ones with conjugations or where I wasnt sure if (A) or (B) was transitive or intransitive (に and を can be difficult here).
Now past N3 I just comfortably read whatever I like reading every day, do zero cramming or effort study and let reading deal with most of the nuance over time. Still have to look grammar up sometimes, but it’s fine if I don’t fully understand as long as I can keep getting practice on what I have studied. Bunpro has done most of the work for me in terms of recognizing grammar, but the real practice that makes thing stick long term comes from reading. No way I’d understand these things from only studying without immersion. I don’t think our brains work well for that. Implicit knowledge from immersion and seeing things repeatedly in context will also help a lot when you try to learn the explicit knowledge and vice versa.
At least that’s been my strategy. Everything gets easier if you read a lot even if it’s a complete pain in the ass in the beginning when everything is slow and nothing makes sense. As a beginner I can really recommend anything with pictures that help give context so you can easily tell when you’re misinterpreting something in the text.
Grammar and vocabulary study are two different beasts. As someone who uses Wanikani for Kanji and Anki for vocab, I can see where grammar can be confusing.
State of mind is the most important thing I think when it comes to your issue. Vocab and kanji can easily be learned with mnemonics and imagery. Grammar, not so much. The examples and explanations for grammar on Bunpro are robust and detailed, but I will admit; they aren’t for everybody.
If I’m struggling with a particular grammar I do several things; Look up examples online, type the grammar into YouTube to see it used, ask ChatGPT to further break down the grammar and give examples.
This may or may not work for you, but I personally only tend to learn things if I learn them deeply, so no speed runs or high scores for me. Just deep dives and a side of trail and error. But if this doesn’t work for you, I’m more than sure somebody’s response will. The language savior complex runs high in this forum. lol.
Legit my exact method 
Good to know it works for other people too
Idk if I had something like this, but after switching to reading mode everything became like a lot more productive, like I have 3 additional hours of reading and not recalling that I can remember (because reading full sentence and then recalling is too long for me).
Probably read more, and when you need it make yourself an Anki deck with sinonims learn rules (I mean you tap “good” only after you answered all differences from another side of card. Also you can do those cards 2 sided.
Bunpro isn’t designed to be a teacher. It’s designed as a tool to retain information (hence, the SRS system). That being said, Bunpro has everything you need to be successful. You just really need to try to internalize the information in a way that makes sense to you. How do you typically learn?
Personally, I have always been a writer. When I study literally anything, I like to write everything over and over in different ways. I take this approach to my Japanese learning as well. I usually write all about the grammar point or vocabulary, write some of the Bunpro example sentences (especially if it can be used in various contexts), and then try to write some sentences that I could see myself trying to speak or think.
It’s a slow process and I can’t speed through the content as fast as others in this community, but it works for me.
I’m halfway N3 now, but despite having most reviews correct I didn’t have the feeling that I really got a hang of it. I started with the Migii app a couple of weeks ago, an app with tons of JLPT practice options. Grammar tests, mix up words to complete a sentence, reading, listening, you name it.
Superfrustrating because in the beginning I made a ton of mistakes - even with N5 grammar.
With every mistake I looked up that grammar point again in Bunpro and often only then I really realized how the grammar should be used. After only a couple of weeks of doing this I hardly make any mistakes anymore with N5 and N4 grammar.
Not saying that Migii is the answer (although I really like the app), but I guess Bunpro helps to retain the grammar but it only really sticks when you actively use it, be it with an app, reading or what not.
After your suggestion I’ve tried a few JLPT grammar reviews in the free portion of Migii (N2).
I think JLPT style questions definitely have their strengths for learning. Mainly because they are monolingual. You need to understand each option to figure out which one is correct and makes the most sense (or at least to exclude 3 wrong ones). At the same time you don’t accidentally shortcut this process with hints. It is probably faster than fill-in, since you don’t need to try several options or synonyms. It also helps that the questions come from a wide range of grammar at once. You don’t have any meta-information of what you’ve studied recently and which ghosts to expect.
Bunpro fill in questions also have their strengths. Especially if you start with no translation or minimum hints, you have to comb through all of the grammar you know searching for suitable patterns, including options that are not even on Bunpro. I’d say fill-in is more difficult than JLPT, and therefore should be more stimulating.
There’s been a suggestion to include JLPT-style reviews on Bunpro too, although I don’t know where the team stands on that. If it requires the content team to manually select 4 options for every single sentence, that would be a lot of work.
Heh, yes, please count me in in the category of “Bunpro explanations are not for everybody”.
Luckily bunpro includes and links to lots of examples.
I also like the note function where everybody can jot down an explanation that makes sense to you personally from another textbook or resource (my current go to is 絵でわかる日本語).
Yes I fully agree with all your points. At the moment I use both, BunPro to learn new grammar, Migii for practicing everything I’ve learned.
it’s kind of similar to what I’m experiencing. Although I would say that I have really liked using Bunpro up to N3 or so, now that I’m in N2, I have this confusing feeling that everything is the same. Maybe it’s because I took a few months break, but it just doesn’t work for me anymore and I’m kind of at a loss here
I have a diffrent answer “It feels like I could be using anki instead”
You can study grammar with anki instead of bunpro. The first Google Page for ‘anki Japanese grammar’ are:
easy: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/911122782
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/474872625
medium: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/843402109
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/841549763
hard: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/712621384
the above anki decks are reading, not fill in. If you like fill in questions you can use this one
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1616679068
I suppose this is fair, but bunpro has a quite nice value add of having a guided lesson plan. Short, succinct, and rather well explained grammar explanations. Typing things in is absolutely ideal imo. The voices for the most part are good (I only speak for grammar, and for the two gals that do the voices…). And also it doesn’t lock you in, it literally shows you other resources to figure it out if the explanations here don’t make sense. You could certainly boil everything down to why not just anki your way to everything but that kinda misses these value adds in the scaffolding these kind of services bring
Adding to what lashette said (although I remember that Anki has a way to have type the answer cards). Bunpro made me feel less alone, I guess? The community itself is a good motivator for me
Thanks for all the replies. I am still really not feeling it. I have a good memory for vocab but the grammar just does not stick for me for some reason. It’s completely unintuitive to me.
I think your other option is a lot of input, especially reading.