Bunpro VS Migii -> Some JLPT grammar are not covered by Bunpro?

Bunpro
#1

So recently I’m training for the upcoming JLPT N3 test.
I’ve completed Bunpro N3 grammar deck and now I’m taking a lot of training on Migii.
What’s worrying me is that I realised that Migii is covering grammar point that I never faced before ?
here are a few examples:

example 1:
戦争を ぬきにしては 、政界の歴史は語れない。
をぬきにして（は）～：without; leaving out; cutting out; dispensing with (I though that 抜きで was a N2 grammar point, I can’t find anything similar for N3 on Bunpro… にしては is Bunpro N3 but I don’t think the grammar point can relate to the example sentence ? (correct me if I’m wrong)

Example 2:
弟は毎日運動しているだげあって いい体をしている。
Verb-casual＋だけあって：…being the case; (precisely) because; as might be expected from
I thought this was N2 as well ?? Migii is putting it in their N3 training so who should I trust (I trust Bunpro more in general)

Example 3:
台風が来るという予想 に反して 、今日はいい天気になった。
に反して → N2 grammar in an N3 question ?

Example 4:
ぜんぜん自信がなかったのに優勝できたので、 うれしくてたまらない 。
Adjい くてたまらない：very; extremely; can’t help but do
Same problem N2 grammar…

This list goes on the more I used this app (migii). I’m a bit worried since I paid a premium for a year access (migii) without realising this problem…
Sorry to talk about a concurrent app on Bunpro’s forum but I think it’s a great way to compare what’s right and what’s wrong in what I noticed.
Should the grammar migii flagged in N3 be moved to N2 or should Bunpro move the N2 grammar point to N3 ?
If anyone has experienced this comparing Migii and Bunpro grammar point JLPT classification I’m all ear.
I’m never doubting on the effort Bunpro devs are putting on Bunpro, I love Bunpro don’t get me wrong, I’m just concerned about Migii JLPT, is it still worth for me to keep on training on Migii if in every batch of question I find at least 2 errors as listed above occur ?

Thank you for reading me

5 Likes
#2

My understanding that these JLPT lists are not standardized, it’s more of a shared tradition at this point. Furthermore many Japanese grammar points are indistinguishable from just vocab, so at some point it becomes very subjective what constitutes a discrete grammar point and at which level it should be.

The JLPT does provide some guidelines of course, but there’s no authoritative, exhaustive list of kanji/vocab/grammar points for a given JLPT level (I believe that there used to be at least kanji lists, but they stopped even that). People just look at the type of Japanese that is used in the tests and training material to infer what’s likely to be needed to pass.

This is a good example of the “grammar or vocab” problem. 抜き is a very common word, にしては is very common grammar, so should it be considered a separate grammar point or just two basic constructs going together? And more importantly, do you need to have a separate grammar point to be able to understand this construction?

Who knows. I don’t think anybody is wrong here, it’s just a choice. Languages are messy, you can’t easily break them down in discrete, isolated levels.

〜てたまらない is indeed N2 on bunpro, but たまらない itself is N3 and adjective-くて is N5. Again showing how arbitrary it is, if you insist on only allowing this as stand-alone grammatical construct, then bunpro says it’s N2, but if you consider it as just adjective-くて + たまらない then it’s all perfectly N3.

12 Likes
#3

I would like to point out that Migii is considered to be one of the few JLPT study resources that is harder than the actual exam, precisely because it does not follow standard JLPT grammar point/vocabulary lists. This is good, as you want to be overprepared rather than underprepared to get the highest score possible.

You should think of Bunpro’s N3/N2/N1 lists as a guesstimate rather than a Bible: while Bunpro’s N2 grammar points can occur on an JLPT N3 test, they are much less likely to occur over Bunpro’s actual N3 grammar points.

8 Likes
#4

As others have pointed out, there are no official lists for the JLPT, so resources are normally giving their best guess. The grammar that appears at different JLPT levels also doesn’t necessarily reflect frequency, although it broadly does.

As for missing grammar on Bunpro, we are still tracking missing grammar points in the background and plan to add them in the future. If you have any suggestions in the future then you can post them in this thread, which makes it a bit easier for ourselves and also other users to track what has already been suggest.

3 Likes