Hi,
I rushed myself through too much of the grammar at once and now have got so many grammar points to review that my brain can’t keep them straight and so I’m not improving. Instead, I’m just getting them muddled over each other.
What can I do to sort this out? Can I mark grammar points as ‘unlearned’? Can I adjust a setting so that reviews are more staggered?
Any help would be super appreciated!
You can adjust reviews frequency in the settings, or manually remove grammar points from your review stack (not sure if there is a way to do multiple points at once tho)
However, you could also just adjust your pace and accept that you will have some reviews left at the end of the day and that’s alright. If you don’t add new grammar points your daily load should decrease at some point. When you say you’ve got too many of them, how much are we talking ? 200 ? 500 ?
If I realize I’ve gone too fast I just set a number of daily reviews in my head to do (i.e. 50) and leave the rest while taking a break from lessons. Eventually over the course of a week or so this starts to break down the pile and become more manageable.
Eventually once my daily reviews drop past that amount then I know its safe to start lessons again.
I’d recommend this over starting from zero and push through even though its demotivating getting things mixed up. If you get something wrong just remember to look at the description and examples to refresh yourself.
I agree with FullMetalAlba. I want to emphasize that after you’re done with the pile of reviews that you have atm, make sure that you adjust your new card number so they won’t pile up again as being consistent is way more effective than rushing and cooling down repeatedly (even though I am guilty of this myself 
)
In addition to the above, you can set review order in review settings (whilst reviewing) to be ascending. This means that the first reviews will always be your weakest, and you’ll repeat the weakest ones first, helping you drill away at the mass of reviews
I’ve ended up with that problem. Especially in Wanikani. Sometimes you need to set limits for yourself. Like, for the next month, only do reviews and no new lessons. It’ll eventually settle down. It’s important to not get overwhelmed, but also to keep at it every day.
I’d recommend not just resetting everything. Reread the lessons when you make a mistake.
“You can adjust reviews frequency in the settings. . .”
Could you please tell me exactly where this is? I’ve looked extensively and haven’t been able to find where one might adjust this. (I understand the implications of changing review frequency.)
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Considering you are lvl 25 (which I think is around N5 grammar done but correct me if Im wrong) my advice would be to reset your grammar progress completely (in the settings). Start over and go slower this time (focus more on understanding the grammar instead of memorizing everything. There are some youtube videos that you can watch, too) and you will slowly be able to go faster. Maybe from 1 grammar point a day to 2, then 3,4,5,…,10.
I think anything faster than 3 new grammar points a day is a lot. Especially if you are new to the language and your foundation with vocab is weak.
Even if you do 3 grammar points a day you’d finish Bunpro in a year. 2 grammar points a day is probably a brisk pace too.
Suppose you did keep up with the grammar, it’s extremely hard to keep up proportionately with the vocab/kanji. Language learning is a marathon, not a sprint.
I don’t think I am adding anything new here, but I felt overwhelmed at one point and took a break (which was probably burnout). I made sure to continue to have Japanese input through reading, watching, and life (I am cheating a little, I live in Japan) during my break, but when I came back, I found that I knew MORE than I had known when I was actively studying. I don’t want to begin to suggest I understand the complexities of the brain and how it might have been sorting it all out from my time of study, but be encouraged and know that your brain is working on it.
Your brain is amazing!
If you have to, reset the grammar down to zero, work on a vocab deck (maybe one of the fun community decks), and then come back and see what you know. If you truly know it, mark it as mastered. If not, you will find that it helps to have the reset and “relearning” period. You’ve got this!
100%. Immersion will help tie together many different aspects of the language. Bunpro is a great tool because of the many varied examples sentences, but immersion will help so much.
Had the same issue and did a full-on reset. But tbf, when you only have this problem with some grammar points, I would probably just reset those few and redo their lessons and adjust the workload accordingly. Especially in the beginning, many make the mistake of underestimating the number of reviews they will get later on, and that the grammar will become more difficult the more you advance in your studies. As someone has said here before: It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Thanks for the helpful study tips, but I’m still trying to find the aforementioned “settings” that adjusts review frequency. Does that even exist?
I’m reviewing grammar & vocab for the N1, and would be interested in seeing if I could reduce review frequency without negatively impacting retention. If this functionality doesn’t exist, that’s fine, but hearing it mentioned before made me curious as to where it might be.
It’s in Settings → Reviews → Advanced → SRS Interval
There you can adjust review frequency 
Excellent. Thank you.
Your daily workload is going to be driven heavily by the number of beginner items, less so for adept, less for seasoned, and on up. There’s certainly no problem with dialing in the number of new items per day, but maybe a better way would be to set an aggressive ideal number of new items per day, but then also not exceed some total number of beginner items.
For example, on Wanikani, I keep apprentice items under 40, which gives me like 50 or fewer reviews per day, which is about what I want to do over there. It’s going to take me a while to finish it up, being level 34 at the moment, but that’s the pace that works for me.
I haven’t set my limit over here, mostly because grammar is scary compared to learning kanji for me, but I would set it at like 10-12 for me before increasing it after a couple of months.
