my advice is to do as many different things as you can in order to diversify, and then if you feel like something isn’t working then you should stop doing it. Doing both Wanikani and Bunpro will not be enough to get you to learn the language, unfortunately, but you can do something like the Kitsun.io 10k deck and then just sleep all of the Wanikani words.
To be honest, I slack way too hard on listening practice and reading practice, but you should probably be doing those too.
For me Bunpro+Wanikani(+Anki) was pretty much perfect. SRS (=reviews) works great for me and i don’t need context to remember things. (Of course you need to practice with native material at some point, but in the beginning, i got way more out of SRS)
The biggest blind spot of WK is lacking hiragana and katakana vocab, but you can easily supplement that, using Torii, Anki, etc. (or kitsun 10k)
I’m level 60 on WK but only at 20% of N3 in Bunpro, yet native material like manga and video games (currently Final Fantasy 7) is already starting to be easy a lot of the time. Of course i often have to look things up, mostly vocab, sometimes grammar (recently i learned -ざる as a literary form of the -ない negation from Final Fantasy 7), which i usually add to my Anki deck, unless it seems very uncommon.
WK+Bunpro+Anki cards collected from media i “consume” is pretty much all I do.
I don’t know that there’s a “perfect match” for everyone. I’m using WK (level 28 now) and Bunpro (started a fortnight ago), and I’m pretty happy. I’m following the MNN2 path, but I’m not sure if I’m even ABLE to kind of combine that with the Bunpro order.
That being said, I also take lessons twice a week over the internet, with a school in Japan called Wasabi, and I’m pretty happy on the whole.
That being said, I find that Bunpro is a bit help with repeating / drilling the grammar, I’m really glad to have found it.
I work a lot, so don’t have as much time as I would like to devote to Japanese, but I find that the combination of WK + Bunpro + MNN + Internet-based lessons is working for me.
Hello! I would say they’re the best for integrating Japanese learning into your life, but I wouldn’t say they’re the best for learning grammar and vocabulary for the first time you encounter them because they’re just flashcards that provide quick explanations. In my opinion, you need to learn these topics with detailed explanations plus a rich collection of homework that will really challenge you to come up with the correct answer.
This may sound traditional of me, but I prefer classic textbook learning with a sensei. I finished Nihongo Sou Matome (vocab, kanji, reading comprehension, grammar, listening comprehension) up to N2, and now I continue to reinforce it with WK and Bunpro.
The instandaneous composition method sounds really fun and i will definitely try it out. Thanks for the recommendation. I was recommended kitsune 10k for any vocabulary that is not within wanikani or bunpro but i was wondering if reading 15 minutes a day and doing that composition method will help this enough? I think i would be overloaded with 3 different SRS systems, and would rather do reading and other more immersive techniques for the rest.
Assuming you paid for access to the service, you’d just look it up on community decks.
Can you explain what mnn2 is? i couldnt find it on google
I’m currently doing the 10k deck along with Wanikani and Bunpro right now, so I can speak for doing three SRS at once; frankly, I think I’m only able to do it because I have a lot of free time, and I’ve purposefully bottlenecked the amount of lessons each day I get from both Kitsun and Bunpro (six hiragana words from Kitsun, and two grammar points from Bunpro). It’s not for everyone, but I enjoy it.
edit: also, the 10k deck gets SIGNIFICANTLY easier the more kanji from wanikani you learn, and it’s not like you need to learn the whole deck, either. At some point you’d probably want to start mining (i.e, looking up words as you go and making flashcards from them) instead.
MNN2 is Minna no Nihongo 2, a commonly used textbook.
It’s a 3 week trial. There are many options so feel free to use their message board for questions.
There are still a lot of very common words that don’t use kanji and a few grammatical stuctures that aren’t taught on Bunpro. You could probably get pretty far using only Wanikani and Bunpro, but there would be huge gaps in your vocabulary.
So far it’s worked well for me but I have 2 years of Japanese classes so far at college too, so some of this is review. I think both are an excellent additional tool to have in your belt if your goal is N3+ or fluency. Good luck!
Wanikani with Bunpro is just barely enough content pass N2, so in that sense completing both would offer a good step to understanding basic Japanese, but neither are the be all and end all of learning Japanese.
I agree with those above and would add that I’ve also felt that Busuu.com (1 month free link) has helped me more with listening, speaking, and writing than anything else. I don’t find it effective for kanji, but it has made all the difference for my understanding of verb conjugations. It’s very good at only including words in the example sentences and audio files that you’ve already learned.
Extra vocab decks are a neat idea, but nowadays i prefer to make my own deck in Anki. Whenever i encounter a new word in some material, i check the frequency, and if it’s common or interesting enough i add it.
I used Torii for a while, which is great in principle. It has the 10k most common words, and
you can let it automatically filter out words you already know from WK.
But i feel like i should check each word in the dictionary anyways in case there are errors in pre-made decks or i can add a nuance that i find important, and i prefer to have my cards in an open open platform like Anki rather than some web app that may become inaccessible.
(Bunpro is different because of the review format, small number of items, lack of alternative, etc.)
and i still don’t regret doing Wanikani until level 60, though i did skip vocabulary lessons later on. WK is for learning kanji, after all.
By the way, obviously only Bunpro+Wanikani isn’t enough to get to a high level of Japanese. You need to practice with native material and get more vocabulary (perhaps in combination). But with that addition, i believe N2 is easily achievable (which is a purely passive test by the way, reading+listening).
I used WaniKani up to level 60 (got to level 60 couple months ago) and I am practicing N2 grammar on Bunpro. I have to say both were very useful in improving those areas. However, as others have said, you will have to at some point do some reading in order to see those grammar and Kanji in context and how it is used. That is the part where I feel you will improve the most.
I watch japanese reality TV. There is so much terrace house on netflix
Do you watch with subtitles? English or Japanese. I feel like with my current level I can use Japanese subtitles and not understand a lot, or use English subtitles and feel like I’m not learning a lot.