Bunpro kinda came at a tumultuous time in my life. I was in the process of moving places. Calls with the realtor, tons of paperwork signing, and boxes everywhere. I remember being so tired I got a brand new (scalper free) PS5 delivered, and was too damn tired to open the box and set it up. The past year has seen plenty of changes, challenges, and ups and downs for me. (More ups) But one constant in it all was Bunpro. While I didn’t meet my personal grammar target, I feel it really has made a difference.
"If vocab is the bringer of understanding、grammar is the glue that brings all that understanding together. "-I actually don’t remember who told me this.
But truth is before Bunpro, I spent a lot of time on vocabulary and with good reason. Vocab is extremely important. Years ago while enrolled in a language school in Tokyo, I felt that I was really struggling. I was able to form cohesive sentences and express myself as well as any of the better students in class, but I never had enough vocab to really understand or express myself the way I truly wanted. One teacher told me "Edo-san, I really think you should study more vocabulary. " So, I kinda took that to heart and spent the next couple years really studying vocabulary and was shocked at the basic things I didn’t know.
Learning vocab was a godsend for me, so I kept it going. Flashcards everyday, multiple 100+ day streaks. You all know the feeling. I felt I was on the right track, but in all of this I was still not really studying grammar. So when intaking Japanese, a lot of the times it would be like, hey I know that word, and get context out of it, but not always understand the sentence.
My experience with grammar:
Like most people starting out in Japanese, my first exposure to grammar came in the form of a book. For me it was a book a classmate let me borrow. It was old, like from the 70s. As a high school kid in the 90s in Texas, we didn’t really have much to work with. So yeah, none of it made sense to me, nor did it when I went to college and took my first proper Japanese class. I did terrible in them. It wasn’t until I discovered Pimsleur that I got a foothold on some Japanese grammar. That was further followed up with Japanesepod101, various grammar decks on Anki, several textbooks, the Japanese book of Basic Grammar Book, Tae Kim, Nihongo no Mori, a couple grammar apps. I learned a lot of valuable information from these sources, but it just never felt fun or comprehensive. And as much as I tried to get myself to study grammar more, I just could not get myself to do so.
Understanding grammar deeply rather than just understanding it on the surface level:
For me, a lot of what I have studied in Bunpro over the past few year is for the most part review. I went through all of N4, a third of N3 and a bit of each of the other levels if there was a grammar I came across that I thought I should add. I started with N3, and worked on it for a while, thinking I’d move up to N2. Then I started to realize that I didn’t know N3 grammar as well as I thought I did. I begrudgingly demoted myself to N4, but it’s a decision I don’t regret. Reviewing grammar every day really helped solidify those connections I thought I made, but failed to reinforce.
My goal for this year is to complete N3. Depending on how things go I may actually go back and do N5, but want to get in to N2 as soon as I can. Realistically, I feel that it may take me 2 years to properly get through all of the levels on Bunpro. (25 min per day average ) I have admittedly had a lot of missed days over the past year, but I’ve been better about it recently. Currently on a 40ish days streak which is my longest so far. Just need to keep it up.
But I did sign up to be here for the long run, and 1 year later I do feel that the work put into Bunpro has paid off. Sentences and dialogue do feel like they are sticking together more. A lot less of 2 or 3 vocabulary words swimming in a sea of particles and misconstrued context. Bunpro has done what all the other books, programs, classes, and flashcard sets couldn’t do; get me to study grammar consistently. And I hope to be here 1 year from now giving my 2 year reflection.
