Confusion surrounding how tenses are taught

Bunpro
#1

Hi all,
first time poster and new user of Bunpro. I have some confusion surrounding how the grammar is taught. I am currently on Chapter 8 of Genki 1 and have recently just started using Bunpro to drill the grammar points I learn from the textbook. One thing that I have noticed is that the Genki grammar deck is not 100% 1:1 with the Bunpro grammar that I’m being quizzed on. Mainly this is due to a difference in politeness levels and tenses. I seem to often get stuck on a question that may require a politeness or tense that I haven’t covered yet in the book, but strangely Bunpro doesn’t seem to mention it in the “information” part of the question.

My example is the grammar point “と思う”。In Genki it is taught as the polite form “と思います” but reading the Bunpro explanation it is easy enough to understand the polite version, the short version and why だ is added in some cases (da has not been mentioned in Genki at all yet, maybe it’s in a later lesson). These are all issues that can be overcome with a bit of reading on the Bunpro explanation.

The big issues that I’m having with this particular example is the past tense. Doing a quick Google search shows that in the next chapter of the Genki textbook, short form past tense is covered, but it is not explained in the Bunpro grammar point. How am I supposed to know what the short form past tense of “と思う” is if Bunpro hasn’t explained it yet?

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#2

I had many similar problems when using only the Genki deck to learn in Bunpro. Adding Bunpro’s own grammar deck to my queue quickly helped fill in the gaps.

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#3

Bunpro grammar is written in such a way that if you follow the Bunpro order then everything should be i+1 (there should only ever be one new thing added). If you follow the Bunpro order then this should always be true (and if it isn’t then please report it and we’ll try to fix it!).

If you follow one of the non-Bunpro grammar decks then you may find some grammar points skipped over or out of order, as the deck/textbook has its own order. They can be used as supplements to textbook study but the Bunpro explanations and examples still follow the Bunpro order, not the textbook one.

I may be biased here but if you have the time and motivation then I’d personally suggest following the Bunpro order on Bunpro and using Genki alongside it to support your studies.

Hopefully that helps and perhaps other users with a similar experience can chip in with their thoughts and what they did!

3 Likes
#4

Hi James, thanks for taking the time to answer my question. It’s a shame that the reviews can’t be more directly linked to what has been learned. It makes the decks feature seem a bit useless if the recommendation is just to stick to the Bunpro order. Unless I’m misunderstanding of course. The intent was for Bunpro to supplement Genki, not the other way around. どうもありがとうございます。

#5

as someone who absolutely tortured himself through the Tae Kim deck, I absolutely and 100% agree. If I could go back in time, I would pick the Bunpro order right away for a lot of reasons.