Do i mark it good if i understand the specific vocab but dont understand the sentence meaning?

Bunpro
#1

So on vocab reviews i just do an anki style pass/fail method. I’m finding as the difficulty of words increases im no longer understanding the meaning of the full sentence. I do spend time figuring out each sentence and breaking it down, looking up words and grammar points i dont quite get, maybe asking AI to explain it to me, i’m sure its helpful but quite time consuming.
Would it be better to just mark it as pass because i understand the vocab and move on to learning new vocab/grammar or should i continue spending time understanding the full meaning of each sentence and fail it if i dont?

I know its ultimately up to me and what i feel like doing but i was curious if other people have found this and what do they think is best?

2 Likes
#2

I’d say that’s not really the best way to use spaced repetition. A card usually focuses on one concept. If you’re focusing on the whole sentence, which may contain 3+ different grammar points and 5+ different words, you’re testing your understanding of all of them simultaneously. You’ll probably end up failing more cards than you need to, and you’ll end up with a ton of pretty useless reviews.

You can think about it another way: imagine you have two cards, one for 卵 and one for 割る. The example sentence for 卵 is 卵を割った. If you’re reviewing the 卵 card but you’ve forgotten what 割る means, does it really make sense to fail the card? The 割る card will come up eventually, and you can fail it then.

4 Likes
#3

Yeah, same with the above ideas, flashcard should just cover the base meaning of the word, if you know the meaning of the targetted word, then it is correct.

That said, many words have multiple meaning, in this case, to be marked correct, you need to guess its correct meaning in the context of the sentence.

For understanding the whole sentence, you will kind of need a lot of basic form flashcard first I think.

2 Likes
#4

As you said it’s ultimately up to you so just to give a different perspective I do fail cards if I don’t understand the sentence, for the most part anyways.
That doesn’t have to mean I need to understand every word tho, just understanding the general meaning of the sentence is fine with me and as the people above have said there’s always the opportunity later down the line to drill specific unknown words.
But if I have no idea what the sentence is saying, or I thought I did but then discovered I was off in a big way, then that to me is the perfect opportunity to learn, and so I fail mainly to create a ghost review.

This works just fine for me but I must say that I believe my bunpro progress is lagging behind my actual ability by quite a lot so reviews are generally quite easy. Maybe if that wasn’t the case I’d review differently, but that’s hard to say.

Maybe a hybrid approach would work best, just fail the sentences that you think are interesting?

#5

yes. you always mark for the exact item you are reviewing, nothing else. so as long as you understand the overall meaning of the word or grammar point as well as its use in the example sentence if there are certain nuances attached to it, you mark it as a pass.

if you have particularly difficult words that you really need/want an example sentence for, write your own with grammar and vocab you already have mastered. although I’m not sure how the self-study stuff integrates into regular deck reviews on Bunpro since I mostly use Anki for my vocab.