Greetings,
I love this site and really respect the work that is going in to it so I hope this perhaps rather harsh criticism will be received within the context of hope that it will reach even greater heights and help many more than it does already.
To be frank, from the beginning I have felt that some of the choices of target do not belong here. I have always assumed that this site is about grammar not vocabulary. The reason is obvious. There is no limit to vocab but relevant grammar point can be easily selected simply by referring to the Kanzen Master book or whatever. Everybody needs to know most of the grammar but the vocab is probably learnt separately using list for other people. Putting words like たちまち in is just a complete waste of time and energy. Of course I can just skip them, but that is not th point. They are wasting space, getting in the way and using your time which needs to be spend on something better. The N2 page now urgently need some rewriting because of its increasing lack of grammar focus.
So as far as improving things goes, N1 has long been promised but has not turned up. I can readily appreciate the sheer amount of work that goes into this site, but instea dof some of those 2 words). would not be that hard? Honestly speaking, I think you are at a kind of crossroads at this point. Potentially , this could be one of the biggest web sites in Japanese language study and hopefully it will make you a lot of well deserved money. I really mean that! But if you make promises and don’t keep them while accepting people’s money you may squander peoples’ goodwill which would be tragic.
Again, accept my apologies for being harsh but it really is because i think this site is so important to so many people.
Warmest Regards,
Buri
@BuriBuri Thank you very much for voicing your concern about the direction of Bunpro. We take every bit of criticism very seriously and we deeply care about what our users think. When gathering content for Bunpro we often found ourselves conflicted over whether or not some items would be considered a grammar point or vocabulary and actually ended up setting aside quite a few items that we could potentially add in the future. However, this does not excuse the fact that we also overlooked quite a few grammar points that perhaps deserved greater attention and their more immediate addition to the site. Here is a tentative list of grammar points that we intend to add to Bunpro once we have N1 content in and have polished/cleaned up current material. Going forward we will be more transparent on what we intend to add to Bunpro further in advance so that we can receive your feedback and adjust the direction of the site accordingly. Thank you for your honesty, patience and support. Cheers!
hi,
I hope it came across as constructive feedback , sort of. I do fell very grateful that I found this application which I credit with getting me through N2.
What I wa swomdering was about the possibility of users inputting their own materials for N1 just for personal use before you can get it going. Like the current self study function.
Warmest regards,
Buri
Personally I don’t translate every sentence every time, I often just chuck the grammar point in. And when I do translate the sentence, I don’t always worry about every single word. I mainly just try to learn the grammar points.
I’m no where near N2, so I’m not sure where words like たちまち fall, but to me, it makes sense that the vocabulary would increase with the grammar. Bunpro assumes, because it has to, that users are learning elsewhere on their own. Their job is to help prepare you for the JLPT (since that’s how the whole site is built). If these more advanced vocab words would show up on the respective JLPT level regardless, I feel like it makes sense to include them. I feel like that’s only benefiting us.
While yes, this site is grammar focused, you can’t really have a sentence without vocab anyway, so why not make it match the JLPT level?
I’m not sure how long you’ve been following the site, and while I understand the frustration, I don’t think including more advanced vocab is the thing slowing the site progress down. I think the additional features has done that, but I don’t say that as if I’m upset about it. With inclusion of cramming, new sentences, audio, better functionality, a new layout, mobile apps, etc., they’ve come a LONG way in the year they’ve been open. I think business wise, it makes 100% sense to focus on the function of the site above content, because without a good UI, the site is useless. (That aside, the majority of their customers would be N5/N4 anyway, so that’s probably another factor.)
This is all just my understanding of it though.
I agree. The improvements over this year are terrific.
Not sure why most customers would be lower JLPT. This site is perfect for N2 in particular. My impression is that is where many students of Japanese struggle with the finite but extremely annoying set of grammar points that are so similar . I was ineterested to find the same point expressed on Nihongo no Mori.
Which reminds me , the Internet site suggestions on this site are in of thmesleves worth their weight in gold…
Regards,
Buri
I don’t have the internal stats, so I can’t say about what levels people are at currently. Their biggest advertising has come from WK, so perhaps it’s more skewed than people randomly searching or word of mouth? But typically lower level/entry level people are more prevalent than higher levels. (I mean, WK alone is a perfect example. LOADS more people in the first few levels than those later down.) I would assume the JLPT is no exception, Bunpro included.
Greetings,
interesting points. Actually, n2 is the most popular level with at least 70 000 more people taking it than n3 which comes in at number 2.
WK is perhaps not such an effective analogy. I completed the Heisig books but I decided to work through WK for a quick review… I also test and recommend applications to very large numbers of foreigner s coming to Japan so I have to have given them one heck of a test…WK is excellent. but, in my opinion, a substantially weake system than Heisig because it requires one step lessof mental processing in that images are already provided. It’s weakness I think, through no fault of its own , is that it stays the same for the duration of the course in terms of practic technique etc. The net result is a system that ultimately requires more and more time to repeat stuff over and over in a way that the mind is not that keen on. Routine can be the death of learning. So my guess is the WK figures are skewed simply because by the time one gets to level ten (where i’m at) the amount of time just repeating becomes something of a burden .I would guess a lot of people quit around this point because their moderate degre eif competence leads them to start looking round more at alternatives.Hence more beginners than advanced.
The advantage of Bunpro derives from the addition of ‘choice’ of targets plus control over things like reps, break times and adding your own stuff.Plus it’s now got a cool yellow line that goes across the bottom of the screen.
Cheers,
Buri
WK was just one example, but in a general sense, this tends to be the case. Humans are notorious for starting things and never finishing them, thus my assumption with the lower levels/beginner sections of anything being more popular than later levels. There’s exceptions to everything, so perhaps the JLPT is one of those, with N2 being the most popular of all the levels, but I wouldn’t know. I never looked into it.
Thanks for your input guys! Very interesting discussion.
Fun fact, N2 level reviews make up less than 2% of the reviews on Bunpro. While N5 and N4 together make up almost 90%.
Of course there are many factors for this, such as the fact that N2 is newer. But the main reason is that the majority of people using Bunpro right now are in the N5 and N4 range.
@BuriBuri I would be curious to see what the numbers are specifically for English speakers. My experience when taking the JLPT, at least here in Japan, was that the majority of N2 and N1 test takers were non-English speakers.
Hi,
it would be interesting to see a breakdown of numbers by country. I noticed this year more textbooks seem to includ e Vietnamese instructions so judging from that reason amon others , there appears to be a big surge in Asian applicants.
On the topic of vocab vs grammar I note these are usually divided into separate books for the JLPT. Is the idea of a two track Bunpro too far fetched?
Best wishes,
Buri
Thanks for the info! 
Perhaps in the waaayy distant future, we could have a global stats page for us curious folks? haha. No worries though, keep up the great work!
For me, the biggest thing I would like is more help differentianting between similar grammar points, and some of the suble differences you get within each grammar point.
I do WK but I’m treading water at level 10. I tries Heisig on Anki but never really found a deck that seemed ideal. Any recommendations on best Heisig approach? I can’t use physical books.
Greetings,
honestly speaking this is a rather difficult question to answer positively. I first used the Heisig method with books about thirty years ago but had to stop for various reasons. Fifteen years later I worked through all three books , as a result of which I can read and write Japanes better than I speak it. Further more, when I see an unfamiliar kanji I can instantly dissect it and then recreate it later if I want to learn it. People who learn kanji using conventional methods tend to have difficulty with this. Heisig was a kind of prototype methodology or way of thinking that paved the way for most of today’s gaijin friendly and ‘effective’ methods of learning the kanji including things like WK. Somewhere en route the world of computers became the norm and the influence of Heisig somehow vulcan mind melded with the new technology and also, people’s new ways of learning stuff which has become virtually computers based for a majority, as far as I can see. Whether this is good or bad I don’t know. Certainly, Bunpro is a good thing!!! However, these days I rarely meet people who actually fully understand Heisig’s ideas or who have the patience to work through them .
One of the biggest misunderstandings, in my opinion is the sharing of so called Heisig decks via anki and the like. I am not saying there is anything wrong with this but it isn’t what Heisig is about. In brief, If you follow through the Heisig method you create your own unique psychological anchor for each radical which never changes no matter how many years yo. spend on the kanji. For example, my ninben radical is a highly erotic image of a girl I used to date. Haven’t seen her in years but someone I’ll never forget. My big radical, is a large st. bernard dog with spittle drooling from its mouth. The point, about making your own weird, funny and consisten anchors is supported by memory experts such as Buzan and cognitive psychology in general, not to mention neuro linguistic programming. Methods like WK sidestep this fundamental process of creation and although I am a big fan of WK and they like they are, in comparison with working on your own images for three or four years, rather shallow. How can they be personal and meaningful if you didn’t create them? The other problem is that one tends not to write anything. Heisigs amazing organization of kanji meant that although one only wrote a kanji one time it wa simmediately repeated and reinforced by the next kanji which included previously learned radicals. One really does write a kanji only one time and yet five or ten years later still be able to write that kanji.
I think if you do Heisig as he intended via the books it would probably take about three years of really hard daily work. Although one is not obviously writing anything, the process of creating stories is a very strenuous mental exercise which can take three or four minutes per kanji . However, that kanji is them locke din your mind for life! Doing the first book of Heisig can feel really weird because although you ‘understand’ and can write them you cannot read them aloud. As Heisig himself put it, after completing the book you are basically in the same position as a Chinese person.’. The miracle takes place in the second book where Heisig puts the kanji in groups. Remember , you know what they all mean but not how to say them. Heisig then say in esssence ‘look at this group. They all have this radical and the are all pronounced this way. ’ Suddenly, without effort, you have just learnt the on yomi of twenty kanji or whatever. It’s a mind blowing experience.
So does this description of just a little of what Heisig is about help? Probably not. Sorry. I think WK is good if you can persevere with it. Real reading actually helps a lot as long a sit is at your level. The Satori reading site is useful. I would also recommend an application made by Serpenti calle d’a modern Japanes edictionary’ or some thing like that. You can paste clipping on it and make your own flashcards just by clicking on words.
Warmest regards,
Buri
cheers for the detailed reply. I might give Heisig a shot, including writing, as WK’s not really sticking. I’ve not progressed in a year tbh. I got to 13, got overwhelmed, restarted from scratch, got to 10 and am making almost zero progress. I’m finding it a chore, maybe a new approach will be more fun.
You can also try Kanji Pict-O-Graphix book. If your visual memory is good, it might be the best solution for you. Check out preview in google.
I second this one. I had the book, though the same problem in reverse. The book didn’t really stick with me and WK did. Though that doesn’t mean the book is bad quality. I think they did a pretty good job for what it is
Another consideration, though a lot more work, is to make your own system of mnemonics.
I’ve ordered this book, ta.
Will try multiple approaches and see what works. I tend to forget mnemonic, although they do often help to start with. I’m not convinced that radicals need to be fixed, sometime I just make up something the kanji looks like. Gonna try more writing as well, see if that helps.