Hi, everyone. I’m a student that’s also employed, so my language learning time is very limited. So, I focus on what’s in my textbooks.
Each stage of Bunpro has tons of grammar points not included in, say, Genki or みんなの日本語. So, if I focus on what’s in the textbooks, will I be missing a lot of grammar points that’ll hurt my reading/comprehension later on with real-world materials?
EDIT: Added emphasis on “real world” content.
Some of the differences may be in vocab/sentences you’ll encounter in the textbooks; for example the word 誰 (I assume) appears in Genki I but it’s technically a vocab not a grammar, so it’s not under the Genki path here.
Speaking purely from an N5 standpoint (assuming that’s what you meant by Genki, not Genki II) I would say it’s worthwhile to do the path first and then go through the remaining ~30 or so and either learn the new ones from scratch, or in the case of 誰, add it and begin the SRS process since you’ll already know it by heart. Long story short - yes, focus on the things not in textbooks because they are going to be equally as important in the long-run and for your reading ability. Since nothing can ever be 100% perfect, if you follow the Genki path you’re going to come across example sentences and even answers that may have you use things from previous lessons and the system assumes the user is going down the Bunpro path. This may not be that big of a thing anymore; previously if you didn’t do the Bunpro path you’d run into a ton of stuff in N5 that was reliant on previous lessons, apparently they’ve adjusted in recently so some of this info may be a lil’ off!
Thank you for the fast reply! In my original post, I should have said “in the real world.” I know a non-Bunpro path may hurt my understanding within Bunpro, but will I have an insurmountable time with real-world materials, if I focus on the textbook grammar points?
I’ve only casually glanced at Genki and other textbooks, kind of hard to figure out what’s ‘taught’ in there that vs. what’s also taught here. N5 specifically, you’re going to want to do every point here that isn’t covered by your textbook because those are 100% used often. N4 generally sticks to the same formula and while there’s a couple points that you may not see a TON (compared to N5 which is pure foundational stuff), I still think it’s worth doing them all there too.
N3 and above you can take whatever approach you want to. Some people do all the textbook points then when they come across something new, they learn it here officially. Real-world content is so hard to gauge, but I think to begin with for N4/N5 you’re going to want to learn everything because you’ll find gaps in things you’ve never seen before. How you end up going about this is entirely up to you and your schedule though for the path of least resistance. Sorry for the roundabout explanation hahaha but tl;dr - yes i think you’ll quickly find gaps if only textbooks are used before N3.