Do I not understand Bunpro? Or is it just the learning experience?

What has worked for me - leaning on the old AJATT idea of ‘familiarity breeds fluency’ - is adding tons of self-study sentences or even just one-word examples in. It takes me forever to add on new grammar points, because I’ll take all the sentences out of Genki and add them into Bunpro, and all the example sentences from Maggie Sensei and add them in, and so on. If it’s a new verb conjugation form or something, I’ll add in just one word examples all the way down the page; here’s the top of my “-te” page Self Study page as an example:

Eventually, this just comes naturally - I’m not thinking through the grammar anymore, I’m just using the conjugated form like it’s a vocab word.

The downside is that once you add in a self-study, it’s immediately in your queue; if you add in dozens at a time like I do, everything tends to clump together until you start getting a few wrong. If you want it parsed out, then you have to self-manage when you add stuff in. I also have duplicate sentences in, because I don’t care if I put a sentence in on multiple grammar points, too - better to have something come up over and over again that is super easy, right? (But I’m also weird and would prefer nothing ever permanently burned automatically and everything would come back at some top-level cadence, like at least once a year or something.) And if something is coming up too often because you added it to 3 or 4 grammar points because one Maggie Sensei post or whatever was cited across those points, then just manually delete the sentence. (Again - the AJATT way of doing things. Add like crazy, delete what annoys you.)

But I’m weird and terrible at nihongo no bunpou despite 3+ years here so maybe disregard. (Probably disregard.)

8 Likes

Man, an import/export feature would be nice to have for these.

I’d definitely do this (I already do something similar with Kanji), but I tend to spend my time in other areas rather than that.

4 Likes

I didn’t expect so many replies, to be honest. Thank you all for your input and advice! I love a good friendly community. :slight_smile:

5 Likes

One of things about language learning especially if you are new is the counterintuitive fact that the common stuff is the hardest to learn.

Especially within Japanese in terms verb conjugation* there are many rules and they are hard to hold in your mind all at once and how they interconnect. てform in particular is notorious for being a difficult thing to learn, but once you internalize it your Japanese is supercharged.

Above all things I always recommend this play list to get started:

*Conjugation is controversial term for this aspect of Japanese but I think it an apt way to think about especially when you are first starting.

6 Likes

Welcome! Everyone here has offered some good advice and it seems like you’re starting to get the hang of things!

One point I’d like to chime in on is that you shouldn’t feel bad about getting questions wrong. SRS is kind of a self adapting system. If you miss a question, it just means that you need to review it some more and that’s exactly what the SRS will have you do. Think of it as less of a quiz and more of a graded practice to help develop your understanding. A missed answer is just an opportunity to further practice.

Later on as well, bunpro will start mixing together multiple grammar points into one question and learning why a certain response is incorrect can be honestly more helpful than just getting it right (although it does feel great to be confronted with an unfamiliar grammar problem and work your way into the right answer).

In short, believe in the SRS and have fun! :slight_smile:

P.S. I personally enjoy turning the hints to minimal (not off) and trying to translate the question prompt into English as an extra way to practice!

6 Likes

Thank you for the extra advice! Things have continued to go really well since switching to Bunpro’s lesson plan. I’m really enjoying how it builds upon itself and seeing previous grammar points added into the example sentences.

I did the same! It’s really cool realizing I can actually read these things :slight_smile:

5 Likes

It’s just a bit weird, you’ll start of just kind of just remembering the lessons at first and not really learning anything and it’s kinda frustrating. But once you get a lesson that builds off of another then it all instantly just starts making sense, or at least that’s how it was for me but I’ve only been here like 3 months. So best I can say is just trust the bunpro path since it’s kinda the flagship path and go back to tae kim when you need more explaation on a point…or just ask for help in the forums and someone will always explain it like it’s the easiest thing ever for you. But don’t worry it really is easy, and there is an opps option for typos.

5 Likes

Just to make sure what I am doing is right:

when bunpro recommends 1-3 grammar points daily, is every item with meaning and example and a quiz at the end, this I can consider a “grammar point”?

1 Like

yes

1 Like

So I should do 3 quizzes a day (3x 3 items) to complete the daily recommendation?

1 Like

Each individual item is a grammar point, it’s just that the default is to learn 3 grammar points at a time and then quiz on them (in the settings you can change the batch size to anywhere from 1 to 10 at a time). One set = 3 grammar points. 3 sets = 9 grammar points

If you feel like you can handle 9 new ones each day, go for it, but you don’t have to

2 Likes

I am already having 45 reviews a day, so I will stick to 6 items per day and see my accuracy.

So far is N5 only.

1 Like

Is there a way to include a search bar in main page so I can easily look for an item?

Now I see I have to go to ‘all lessons’ and then I can searh for an item.

1 Like

Ooof! Depending on your current level I wish you the best of luck :stuck_out_tongue: (Though if that is actually an amount you can manage all the more power to ya!)

Not that I know of, but I have just bookmarked Grammar Points | Japanese Grammar SRS to quickly look up stuff :stuck_out_tongue: Might be a script that does it, though I haven’t come across it myself.

1 Like

I got scared now for your words :thinking:

is it already too much 6 items a day?

Yes, basically a script would be fine showing a search bar right?

1 Like

It really depends on your level and stuff. For NEW grammar points (that you aren’t familiar with or haven’t really encountered enough yet) it is A LOT. If it’s just a sort of review (let’s say you are N3 for example, N5 would be EASY at 6 grammar points per day, N4 would be quite manageable, N3 would become difficult, and adding grammar above your level would be my personal concept of hell :stuck_out_tongue: )

It’s mostly because you need time to internalize the grammar, potentially read up on it from multiple sources to gain a deeper understanding and have the chance to encounter it in the wild (or targeted look-ups).

But as I said, mostly depends on your actual level. And it’s always do-able, but you might get low accuracy on reviews, and if you have ghosts enabled on the strictest setting (which I personally recommend, but that’s up to you), the number of reviews can quickly spiral out of control.

For example, I consider myself very familiar with N5 grammar, but reset on the 16th for a strict, no typos and able to think of all alternatives run through. It still took me up to today to run through all N5 grammar points, as I didn’t want to overwhelm myself. So that would be like 4 - 5 grammar points per day roughly.

3 Likes

Nah, nobody knows what your ideal item count per day is.

As long as you feel you are spending enough time to understand each, add as many as you think are good. And if you ever feel overwhelmed, start adding less.

1 Like

when we do reviews, and get correct all items, shouldn’t at the end show 100% correct?

I just did 2 reviews and got them right and still showed 92.66% correct. Something am I missing to pay attention?

I believe it shows all reviews done in the last day and uses that to work out the percentage

2 Likes

The problem is that there is a lag between starting items and when the reviews hit you. So although there is a review forecast this does not (I presume) take into account how many you are getting wrong - the more you get wrong the more come back to review. So if you are already struggling, then dumped with a huge pile of reviews and are unable to clear them then it will just go on getting bigger and bigger, which can be quite overwhelming. Then you have to stop taking new items and just focus on clearing them and that can be a bit painful, especially if you’ve got other things to manage in your life.

3 Likes