How does it feel?
I feel sort of guilty in not even trying to read a sentence.
I’ve tried the other modes:
It’s good for retention, but it takes up too much time.
Pro: Get to practice some reading.
Con: Feels like a chore.
Sentences are ridiculously hard. Too many other vocabs from higher levels in the sentences.
I’m trying to test myself on a certain word and not to learn more higher-level words/grammar while doing the reading.
Although I am an employee of Bunpro, please take this answer as if I was a learner of Japanese (which I am). My philosophy with reviews has changed many times over the years, and the one that I enjoy the most at the moment is Reading Mode.
Why? You get the most bang for your buck with the least amount of effort. No need to type anything, just gotta press ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
I 100% agree that it feels like a chore at the beginning, but this is only at the beginning. The more proficient/faster you become at reading, the more this method of review takes over as the most beneficial. The reason I say this is that if absolutely all of your reviews are reading, then the rate at which you see rare words compared to common words will adjust accordingly, and you will also become much more likely to remember the more natural sounding words in conversation.
If we’re using English as an example, I think maybe a lot of people would know the meaning of the word ‘parry’, but a lot less would know the meaning of the word ‘riposte’. They are not the same, but a lot of people would use them as if they were the same, and admittedly they share a lot of similarities. However, despite not knowing both super well, most native speakers would be able to tell you immediately that ‘parry’ is more common. Reading mode will give you that sense of intuituion about which words are the most common. Imo, this is a very valuable skill, as it will teach you to be able to predict text/what people are going to say, which can make up for a lack of listening comprehension in the beginning.
Note: This is my opinion for vocabulary. For grammar I wholeheartedly recommend Fill-in mode. The reason being that the goal is not recognition, but the ability to be able to use the grammar/think of it in relation to equivalent English phrases when you are speaking.
I guess I can stay with reading mode.
I’m just oscillating between continuing or finding something else.
The main complaint is that there are so many sentences with advanced words.
It is just too annoying to try to read.
彼女は歌手として成功しました。
Technically として is an N3 grammer point in a N4 sentence, but we can let that slide.
お釣りを間違えて渡さないようにしっかり硬貨の数を数える。
At least allow me to click on the word for a definition.
涙で濡れた頬をそっとハンカチで拭く。
Hey… Come’on. This is a N4 deck/sentence.
It is annoying to try to read sentences with almost every word above your level.
Yes, it can be done, if I look everything up, it is just a chore to even try to read this. Show it to me later in N3 after I learn a few more words.
I do felt the same and sometimes still do.
What I ended up doing is focusing on the target word, then trying to get the whole sentence if I’m not in a rush.
And if I have enough time / motivation at the moment, I would look for any word or grammar construction I’m not familiar with.
If I don’t, I would pass and be like “ok, later. Exposition will do its part anyway” or fail to create a ghost and put more effort next time.
Edit : I do agree that quick look up for unknown words would be a huge plus though. Just as it is in the beginner deck.
To be honest, this is the same experience in trying to read stuff anywhere else, unfortunately. It’s a good thing bunpro models this accurately. Unless you are reading graded material, or super basic stuff, it is wild card after wild card, all the way through.
Being able to see a definition instantly is great though, and I use yomitan for that here as well.
Unless you are reading graded material
But, aren’t the sentences graded? There is a N4, N3 etc next to it.
This is why I am expecting to stick in the grade.
This becomes less of a problem as you and your vocabulary grows. For now, focus on just the target word and move on. As youre able recognize more and more words the sentences will get easier and provide helpful context when youre ready to try and read them. Dont force yourself to slog though them if you dont want to. Focus on the vocab and use the english translation of the sentence to guage your understanding of its use.
regarding this, you might find this snippet useful.
What this means is that (by the end of N5), there should be at least 2 to 4 sentences in every word card that you will be able to read.
The sentence that I marked as hopeless is the first sentence!
The problem is not the grammar but the vocab.
Anyways, I will continue slogging through reading mode, but it is not ideal for me. The sentences are just too annoying. They should stick to their written grade.
You could try reframing it in your mind, because feeling like an aspect of Japanese studies is something you have to slog through isn’t ideal.
How I like to think about these situations for myself is that Bunpro is giving me the opportunity to learn multiple things simultaneously instead of just the thing being reviewed, thereby making my study time more effective. The reviews are being tough on me now so I will have it easier later, by having built a broader base of knowledge. That might be a better mindset to be in, turning it into something positive instead of a perceived hindrance. Assuming your end goal is being fluent you’re going to learn those things at some point anyway, no harm in learning some things sooner than some N-level is telling you is appropriate, right?
And if you aren’t already using it (or equivalent addon), download 10ten Reader to look up word definitions faster.
The grades are not set in stone, and there’s quite a big problem in categorizing this words and sentences, I imagine some are manually graded, and others are automatically. There’s 900 grammar points here, so they managed to write only 10800 graded sentences manually on the grammar side. For vocab, there’s no way they did it manually, and even if they did, their decision is somehow questionable in some parts as you can see below.
Edit: the sentences are written manually. I don’t know if the grading is also manual, but it makes sense to be as well.
According to jpdb, 涙 is the top 756 word, 頬 is 1455, そっと is 1384 and 拭く is 2534. Of course, this varies according to which type of material is analyzed. Even if you didn’t know these words the first time you saw them, statistically, you would very soon see all of them again in another sentence. When you reached the N3 deck, you would already know quite a lot of those words by exposure alone, if you did an effort to recognize them a few times.
Seeing how common 涙 is, you would expect it to be at least on N4 grade I guess. Why it isn’t the case? I don’t know, my guess is that the vocab categorization on Bunpro is focused for people who will actually do the JLPT tests, so 涙 would more rarely appear on the N4 test, but have more chances of appearing on the N3. Regardless, the words in the N5, N4 and N3 decks should still be way too common and it doesn’t matter too much which category they are in.
Don’t focus on the categories too much, because every learning resource will have different definitions one way or another. If you want to do a little work and read the harder sentences, it’s a good idea to install a browser extension like 10ten or Yomitan to look up words. If you don’t, just focus on the vocab itself and move on, it’s not that bad either.
I imagine the devs are working on the click-to-definition thing for every word, but it’s technically challenging, so it will probably take a while.
I believe all the vocabulary sentences are in fact also written manually by native speakers, as per the update post that IcyIceBear linked to above and as per all other vocab update posts that I can recall. Higher level translations are machine translated pending human confirmation however the Japanese itself should be manually written, as far as I know.
All of the sentences were written by native speakers, with the target grammar level in mind. In the vast majority of cases the vocab itself is also quite level appropriate. One of the problems with the vocab is you kind of have to choose one of two evils. Have 1000 vocab items that all use the same set of 1000 N5 level words and end up with sentences so repetitive that doing reviews would be a nightmare, or do the sentences with a slightly more free reign on the vocab (but still keep the words as common as possible), and have a bit more variety in reviews.
The good news though is that, as with any language, vocab is hard until it isn’t. And the sooner you force yourself to hit that point of knowing enough words for reading sentences to not feel like hard work, the sooner the rest of your vocab learning journey is going to become smooth sailing.
We are actually in the process of manually checking all machine translations of the English right at this moment. So it should all be complete within a few weeks tops.
I agree you absolutely have to force yourself, it helps progression so much.
The issue you can find yourself in (which could be the OP case), is that even if the vocab is level appropriate, you’d have to already have mastered this level’s vocab to be confortable reading the level sentences which is unlikely.
So it could male more sense using a vocab that is feature a level below or at least sparsely uses the current level which I think is how graded readers operate.
Pretty much an impossible balance for anyone to be happy though obviously 
What I really wish for is the ability to have fill in and translate both checked as options. Or just have translate require you to give the english definition and then randomly in your review ask for the the kana of the vocab. Even if it made my reviews take longer, it would be nice to get tested on recalling the meaning of the word and how to spell it.
Personally, I prefer sentences by a huge amount. It gives me reading practice, listening practice and exposure to words and grammar. But sometimes I see issues just like you.
Some words are always in complicated sentences with unknown words. Sometimes I have trouble with the word, but the sentences gives too many clues so I cann just guess the right word.
If those cases keep happening for a specific word, I change it to translate for a few reviews, until I feel like I know the word well even without context.
When learning a new word, I usually go through all the example sentences. If I notice the sentences are way too complicated for me, I just set it to translate right away.
I like the variety in the texts and would feel that Bunpro was making itself worse if it made stricter separations between N-levels.
But for users that feel like FlippFuzz, would it be possible to add an optional feature where you can manually mark which sentences are included / excluded in reviews (like a checklist)? So that if some users wanted to, for example, exclusively review their own self made sentences they would be free to do that.
Because at first this issue seems like a dilemma where everyone can’t get what they want, but adding a feature like I described should resolve it for users on both sides of this issue (assuming the users currently unhappy with the texts are willing to do the extra work of custumizing their reviews).
But for users that feel like FlippFuzz, would it be possible to add an optional feature where you can manually mark which sentences are included / excluded in reviews (like a checklist)? So that if some users wanted to, for example, exclusively review their own self made sentences they would be free to do that.
It’s all right. We don’t need a different feature.
Basically, I don’t like the fact that there are too many higher-level words in the sentence.
Others, like it. Personal opinions here.
I will just treat sentences that are unreadable due to too many higher-level vocabs as translate mode. Just ignore the sentence. Will continue looking to see if any other tools suit me better.
You convinced me to switch all my vocab to reading. It definitely took 3-4x longer to get through all of the reviews but I actually found it less boring that any other review method.
Thanks, new to the site and still trying to figure out the optimum method for reviewing. Asher’s explanation is what I was thinking, will use it going forward.