Are you learning vocabulary & kanji from example sentences?

Bunpro
#1

Hello! New user here, just trying my first grammar points. I plan to work simultaneously with みんなの日本語 books and Bunpro, but started with basic grammar points via the Study Full Chapter option. Meanwhile I am learning kanji with WaniKani (adding some offline calligraphy slots), currently I am around level 3, so I know a few kanji, but not that many.

Even in the first few grammar points, I find kanji and vocabulary which I do not know, such as, for example (in です card):
友達です。 (He/she) is a friend. [polite]

Here, I did not know the meaning, reading or kanji for friend (友達). There are multiple such items as I look into the first chapter study stack. I checked Bunpro FAQ for Study instructions, but the “Examples” sections does not mention kanji or vocabulary.

Do you take notes and study all kanji and vocabulary as you go through a grammar point? If not, is it safe to assume that all the vocabulary will keep coming up in the reviews? Or perhaps should I just not worry about this, because in a month or two I will get all the basic kanji and vocabulary from WaniKani?

So what is your process? When do you safely assume that you have properly done a grammar point? How much attention do you pay to example sentences? :flags:

PS. I also saw that there is a WaniKani API for hiding kanji and vocabulary which are on my stack on WK. Why would someone want to hide WK items on Bunpro? Considering the fact that the more exposure, the better, shouldn’t the exact reverse of this option be available?

4 Likes
#2

Personally, I don’t usually read the whole sentence as I get my vocabulary from other sources. I use BP exclusively to learn grammar. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be doing it though - just do what works for you.
Don’t worry about the kanji, because you can add furigana whenever you want - you can even link your BP account to your WK account so it will automatically not show furigana for kanji you have already learned in WK lessons.
I suppose if you’re just starting out, your method of study will be pretty different from mine - when I started BP I was already a Japanese speaker. In the elementary grammar lessons, it should be pretty easy to pick up vocabulary, like in your example, it’s pretty obvious that 友達 is ‘friend’. This gets more difficult as the grammar becomes more complicated, but if you’re doing it in conjunction with WK, then it should come more naturally pretty soon anyway.

6 Likes
#3

Oh, so this is what the API is for! Thank you so much!

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#4

I agree with @matt_in_mito. This is a grammar site, so I wouldn’t worry too much about the kanji. Of course, your own curiosity will make you want to learn some of the kanji anyways. If anything, I’d say it’s more useful to pick up new vocabulary from these sentences, and just let the kanji come with time.

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#5

The WK API is not intuitive enough to know whether you know the word or not. So you will see various words where furigana gets hidden that you may not have encountered before (or different on/kun reading). And WK does not cover all joyo kanji so will encounter new kanji not even in their database. If I’m encountering new and useful words, I auto-create a card and send it to my SRS on another platform for another time.

I will generally read all the sentences as I do reviews and selectively use the audio. There is a lot of useful information on just one entry; vocab, audio, other grammar points, etc. However, I do lose my patience with ghost items as I’ve seen the sentence many times and just try to focus on the grammar.

2 Likes
#6

How do you “auto-create a card”? For which SRS platform?

1 Like
#7

I use kitsun.io and there are couple of search extensions you can use that highlight a word, send to their Jisho dictionary and create a full entry for a card in under 5 seconds. If you are a user, there are links on the API page in their forum.

Example

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Screen Shot 2020-12-21 at 2.35.25 PM.png749×682 151 KB

I’ve heard of people using a modified Yomichan extension to Anki but I’ve never used it

3 Likes
#8

@s1212z is it possible to use kitsun.io without a paid subscription? I used it back when it was in beta, but then dropped out. Their community-based-yet-requiring-monthly-subscriptions business model did not agree with me. Autocreation of flashcards does sound tempting, though…

3 Likes
#9

I believe it’s a two week trial and as of today, there is a holiday sale (at least on the yearly) if that is help.

I won’t oversell it since you’ve used it but there has been alot of growth since the launch with additional features in the coming year. I’ve sampled the subs2kitsun and like it alot too. As for community based, I generally make my own decks but I’ve posted a few and it’s been a positive experience since the community deck feedback loop just makes the content more polished. But generally, I feel it’s the autonomy I have while having a user friend interface is what I’m paying for (which means I spend more time studying with alot less hassle). But using 3 SRSs systems is a juggle I have to admit :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
#10

You must have a pretty neat workflow, handling all three :mechanical_arm:
It’s really motivating, though! I should give kitsun another go once I get a grip on juggling Bunpro and WK.

3 Likes
#11

Autocreation of flashcards does sound tempting, though…

Yomichan + its Anki integration can do the same thing!
Super easy, just one click (once you’ve set it up). You can automatically put things like audio and the sentence you got the word from on the card as well.
And it’s free :smile:

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#12

I learn vocabulary and kanji from Wanikani. Bunpro often has words that aren’t in the Wanikani course at all and I do try to pick those up and learn them, but to each his own.

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#13

I really really like Japanese grammar and my grammar knowledge far exceeds my vocabulary level, so from time to time I do add to some kanji / vocabulary from Bunpro to Anki. I try to focus on the grammar here and not worry too much.

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#14

Now, I’d love to be able to view or search through all the examples for the grammar points, especially those I’ve already started studying
Does anyone know of a way to achieve this? I can’t see how to do this either on the website or in BunPyro.

1 Like
#15

My vocabulary was far far farrrrr below what it is now when I first started using BP, there were words I didn’t know coming up all the time. So long as you are understanding enough to actually understand the grammar, then it is fine. Please make sure you are actually understanding the grammar though and not just ‘I guess I get it…’

However if you are doing this, I recommend 100% to come back to the early grammar points later into your studies, as reviewing them again from scratch will really build your confidence and help solidify the concepts in your memory.

3 Likes
#16

BunPro seems very good for introducing gradually more complicated kanji and vocabulary alongside the grammar points in the example sentences. Compare BP example sentences with WK example sentences.

As much as I love WaniKani, their ‘context sentences’ absolutely suck. WK needs to redo all their examples and only use vocab and grammar that the user is likely to be able to understand at that level of WK.

4 Likes
#17

Thank you! This tip is so helpful. Now I wonder if doing reviews with English translation all the time doesn’t defeat the purpose…

1 Like
#18

WK example sentences are so complicated that I cannot even begin to process them. I am not sure what they are for actually, especially for lower levels.

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