Bunpro Vocab, does it hate us?

Japanese
#1

I’m sure I’m not the only one, but pretty sure the vocab list hates me. I’m a little over 100 days since I started in general, and I’ve used this app or that app, and I learned my Kana and pretty good on about 100 of the beginner Kanji. I’ve learned some grammar and still need to learn more before I’ll feel more comfortable at the N5 level. If I had to guess, I’d say my vocab is up to a couple or few hundred words (although some are marked at a higher N level, but considered “common”).
So I know Vocab is a big area for improvement. And I’m working on it through this and a few other things.

That said, what the heck is with the order of how they’re given? I swear I get like one word I know, and then a whole bunch of ones I’m definitely not familiar with. I stopped doing vocab for a few days just because my retention simply wasn’t there when it comes to here. Still, it’d be nice if the list was by frequency or came a little easier, as in give me some wins with the losses. Give me some こそあど words or some verbs, or some nouns, all these adjectives, sigh… And what about nuance? I know 親切 Bunpro gives me 優しい, which then I have to figure out what the nuances are…lol :man_facepalming:

I know I’ll get them eventually, but SRS just doesn’t seem to work for me until I’ve seen the word at least a half dozen or more times.

Anyone else?
Not that I’m looking for Suggestions, but how do others tackle new words? I like writing, but I’m still pretty slow at it for now to say it’s completly viable. When I get faster at writing, I can consider it another efficient option.

#2

Are you using Anki? That’s my primary vocab source along with Wanikani. I have a few vocab decks in Anki and find that some words just go through me. The leech feature is useful for that (i set mine to suspend after 4 lapses and then come back later), unfortunately there is no leech feature in Bunpro. My strategy is just to power through it, knowing that it will take time to learn, that forgetting is part of learning, and making mistakes. For me this is a life long process so I have no problem with progress looking like a jagged line up and down.

#3

Do I use Anki…kind of. Without signing up for a million mailing lists, I couldn’t convienently find a deck for AnkiDroid (I work outside and while I do get on my computer, it’s not a consistent thing, which early seaches didn’t really turn up anything for the app.) So, through another app I can add words to AnkiDroid, but it’s still a bit annoying. I’ve determined that it doesn’t quite work at the initial stage for me. It gets a little more complicated than that. So, I found an app called Reword which is similar and has built in lists. I’m having better luck with that, while some words are familiar, there are other that aren’t, but the appearance definitely is a lot better in my opinion. In the same amount of time, I’ve studied about 150 cards (separate count from words I’ve marked as known) versus Bunpro’s 50.

What I do like about Bunpro’s is the extra example sentences following pitch patterns. I don’t fully trust Reword for that, plus they’re not in sentences. I do like the options for recall though on that app. (3 options When the card comes up: basic view of other side, 4 part multiple choice, or type it.) Generally the first few times I’ll choose MC and then move on to typing it.
Words I find I’m still struggling with, I tend to write down, but as I said, I’m not really quick at that yet. Once I’ve written it down though, my retention rate is a lot better. The rate I’d like to learn words though just doesn’t justify doing that method first. (I was aiming for 5/day on here, but decided that it’s more like 5-15 a week for Bunpro.)

Btw, today’s words were finally some simplier ones. But lol, I added in 軽い for one I’ve been struggling with, and I still got it wrong, because the example sentence used promiscuous.
I’ll say that I think this might be my way to go, adding words to the Bunpro deck manually.

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#4

Have you checked out the Community Decks?

There’s one Jake made, called “Core 4K” which is really good! The list of words looks to be more useful than the N5 deck since words seem to be grouped in a logical manner (at least from what I could tell), and also they are more useful. I recommend checking it out.

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#5

Is it for AnkiDroid?
If so, I’d love to check it out!
Where can I find that?

#6

No, it’s here, on Bunpro.

Just go to “Decks” => “Community” and you’ll see it.

BTW, he also made a “Core 2K”, if you want to start simple.

#7

I searched “Core” and found it. Thanks, I’ll check it out!

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#8

I use these core 6K ones:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/nio5mf/japanese_core_6000_vocab_anki_decks_audio_pitch/

Great quality audio example sentences

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#9

I might look into that, there are some hurdles I’m not interested in at the moment, so putting this here for my reference. It’s how to get Anki Decks onto AnkiDroid.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/17lskzd/ankidroid_and_ankiweb/

Also, what does everyone use Anki? I’m interested in other ways too :sweat_smile:

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#10

They also include a useful link on how to use Anki:

“I actually follow the recommended settings on this site: https://refold.la/roadmap/stage-1/a/anki-setup The recommended options settings are towards the middle of the page.”

Importing the decks is straightforward from what I remember i.e. pretty much just downloading and clicking ‘Import’, then I just went with the setup options on that page. Got me started after a long time not using Anki!

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