you were completely fair. I was measuring wanikani based on certain traits that others may not focus on or want from the site.
edit: that said i was focusing on wanikani as a site for vocab. so i dont think i was wrong in my statements.
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Things are starting to heat up. Not only is it Wrestlemana week, it’s apparently Bunpromania week as well.
“文プロマニアの全員、熱心に盛り上がれ”
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Let’s just make sure we keep everything on track here folks. Remember that even though it is far easier to attack a person than an idea, that approach is not really helpful at all for anyone involved.
There is a lot to be said about scientific studies into the way that ‘learning’ happens, and what methods usually result in the fastest absorption of any particular knowledge. However, basically all of these methods fall apart when confronted with what exists at the terminal end of learning. The individual.
Bunpro has strengths and weaknesses
Wanikanai has strengths and weaknesses
Anki has strengths and weaknesses
All of these statements are terminal end assertions based on the individual themselves, rather than the actual platform. What would be better would be -
Bunpro doesn’t work well with my strengths and weaknesses
Wanikanai doesn’t work well with my strengths and weaknesses
Anki doesn’t work well with my strengths and weaknesses
Study with whatever you have the most fun with and whatever makes something stick for you. If you actively want to use a platfrom/resource but find that whatever that platform is doesn’t really gel with you, all you need to do is think about something that does actually work for you, and then figure out what the difference between the two are. After figuring that part out, try to approach the problem material again in a way that works for you. If you can’t do that, you need to make the choice about whether to keep going, or whether to reevaluate your study tools. Not everything will always feel comfortable, but results will always overwrite any feelings of temporary discomfort.
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What I’ve found that makes bunpro VOCAB harder than it has to be is
Many people (including me) look at the English keyword, or Japanese highlited word and type in the closest 1:1 translation. such as
起きる written ‘pick up’ [instead of ‘get up’] 拾う which I learned as ‘pick up’ was wrong.
or school was 群れ (school of fish) not 学校
I would recomend using the ‘translation’ type vocab answer if you are having this same problem, then listening cram when you can to get those amazing voiced sentences goodness.
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I’ve used Bunpro for several years and I still feel this way a lot. It’s important to remember that it’s supposed to be hard. The way brains are wired, the only way to get lasting gains is to strategically frustrate yourself. That in general is why spaced repetition works the way it does.
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I did remembering the kanji first and found it useful
It helped me read menus, ingredients lists, and reading shop names written in kanji like the bubble tea shop ‘tiger sugar’ is 老虎堂黒糖博売
老 old 虎 tiger 堂 amount 黒 black 糖 sugar 博 specialty 売 sell
A tiger amount of black sugar shop. because the molasses looks like tiger stripes!
It felt magical.
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Well, sure it can be annoying.
That said, by looking the keyword and trying a 1:1 translation you’re not taking advantage of the cloze type reviews
I’d say you’d better try to grasp the general meaning of the sentence and infer what’s expected. It takes way more time to go through reviews, but it’s way more useful. At least to me.
Of course that would not work in every cases, but let’s not forget a word can have several (too much ?) meanings, especially in Japanese. And well…idioms !
I think it’s a good thing Bunpro show those alternative ones in context too. There’s ton of them and I can’t count how many times I’ve been like “oh ok, it can be used that way”. So you get it wrong two or three times and then just come to understand it’s part of the meaning of the word.
Edit : What I do find annoying is that those less obvious meanings are often not even mentioned.
Oh, and synonym-ish words. 
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Yeah, I know. but I keep doing it anyways. Better to mitigate than wish on it I suppose…
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Good quote which has given me a spurt of motivation just as I was thinking of taking it easy this evening.
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People do say this but I am not convinced it does teach people to read. Back in the 70s when learning to recognise and write kanji would have been important for learners I think perhaps it was a fine system but the use is redundant given smartphones. This is my opinion, at least. Plenty of people have done RTK and gone on to actually learn to read properly later though so it clearly has some utility. These things are near impossible to evaluate well and as Asher says above different things work for different people at different times so I would be reticent to reject it wholly but more modern kanji writing and learning systems like Kanji in Context or KKLC would be where I would recommened people to look before going to RTK.
Also I think 老虎堂黒糖博売 is Chinese and not Japanese (not a joke). Also I am not aware of a word where 堂 means “amount” but I am no kanji master. Is that the RTK keyword?
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@CursedKitsune basically covered everything I was gonna say, except I’d also recommend Wanikani for Kanji learning, but that’s my personal preference (of course).
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