End of bunpro

Bunpro
#63

You message was long ago, but you wrote about 8 hours of learning/day and immersion, so I assumed it is 8 hours of dedicated learning + immersion)

I can agree that leaving in a country is a grate push for learning, but in my experience dedicated learning helps much more after some period of time when you accustomed to livestyle in another language, for example in my native language I wasn’t improving for a long time, as well as in English, it’s gradually getting better last 2 years, and I’m doing basically almost everything with it, including speaking with my family day after day, but it’s not very fast as it can be with just 1 hour of dedicated learning.

If we assume that person can concentrate 8 hours without being destructed and learning only 1 instead, do you think my plan makes sense?

We can add a little more speaking + mistakes sentences cram if we lower amount of hours on words and assume 15 or 20 or 25 is possible in 1 hour, and immersion will do the job as well (20 repetition rule, mb like 40 rule for Japanese but in 1k immersion where at least 500 is reading it shod be at least 6k words(also wee add many to Anki so we can assume at some point they just work together and Anki speed increases))

#64

I think if a person is truly able to achieve 8 hours of concentrated study everyday then they definitely could learn exceptionally quick.
I have heard of a person who became obsessed with learning Japanese. He spent all of his free time studying for hours a day. He did become fluent very quick. I believe it was less than 2 years and he was N1.
Though I didn’t mention this before because it’s very rare. It does happen though!
I don’t want anyone to feel bad that they have been studying for years and years but still aren’t N1. For regular, easily distracted, people like me it take some time :sob:
Also if your mother-language has similar grammar or uses Kanji you can learn much faster.
For me growing up I used English and Portuguese. The grammar is completely different than Japanese. I have a friend though whose native language is mandarin. He recently took N1, and almost passed. However, we are in the same class so the same level of Japanese expect his Kanji level is far higher than mine. He can score high on most of the test because he already knows kanji. Usually the listening section of the test gets failed.

On a side note, I hope all your language learning goes well! You are very talented for being able to speak many languages. It’s wonderful and I hope you will continue to learn Japanese, :slight_smile:

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#65

I think if you were targeting the amount of content necessary to pass N1 in one year then you could be said to be memorising the language rather than learning it. Perhaps there is a validity to doing it that way? It would make for an interesting experiment. I would be interested in seeing who could get the better N1 score. Assuming they learned the exact same amount content, would the one with the higher score be the person who brute forced memorized it in a year, or the person who spent 3 years doing it at their own pace? Since the reading section of N1 does require a certain amount of actual comprehension and test-taking skill, I think the person who learned the same content over three years would ultimately have the advantage. But then maybe the 1 year person would have a lot fewer bad habits and hang ups since their study routine and technique would in theory be highly optimised?

Personally, I tend to read everything pretty slowly because I’m not racing against the clock to get a book or manga finished, so when it comes to the JLPT N1 reading section I spend waaay too much time on it and re-read things a lot, but really you have to read quite quickly once only to get through all the reading contents with enough time. But the way I see it, is that ultimately the result is the same and we have read the same thing. One person just did it slightly quicker, perhaps with less of an understanding than the person who took their time and read it slowly.

In the end, all roads lead to fluency if you stick with one path.

#66

In a marathon at least you know how many km are left T.T

#67

Pizza-Hut-Japan-udon-noodle-weird-food-1
Pizza-Hut-Japan-udon-noodle-weird-food-11200×630 123 KB

Truly a man before your time

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#68

:joy_cat::joy_cat::joy_cat:

#69

complete RTK / wanikani : 5% of actual reading mastery.
complete all bunpro grammar : 5% of japanese fluency (if rushed 1% probably)
I am being very generous.
These are just first steps (excellent foundation that pays off if not rushed, close to useless in the long run if rushed)

Also someone impatient or result-driven is losing time.
Loving the process itself is obviously the way to go, I’d even say time should not even be a parameter in language learning, it is just a poisonous distraction to the whole thing IMO.

1 Like
#70

I agree that rtk (meanings) (not wk because there are 6k words in addition) can be 5%, it’s about 100-150 hours, so basically 5% from 2000-3000 hours. Bunpro should be more then 5%, it’s 300-500 hour depending on pece of input i guess. Also I can feel how grate my 100h of bunpro are paying off, have same hours of immersion and it’s not the same thing.

I totally disagree about rushing and I think it’s optimal way of doing almost anything

#71

Interesting experiment, if the second one is getting higher score (if it is the same person) this means learning 7-8 hours/day can be a bit of wasting time in a long perspective, and it would be better to study different stuff in one day over the long period!
Anyway, it’s not fun, I wouldn’t learn Japanese if I couldn’t speedrun it I guess (idk, mb I would, who knows)

#72

Dear god the title of this thread scared me when it popped up in my dashboard

9 Likes
#73

To me language acquisition is a long term project and if you look at it on a short-term basis I would agree with you rushing is doing wonders,
on a longer term I personally think the strategy has to be different. (the typical marathon image right?), impatience becomes a trap rather than a motivator

Typically the first months of any learning in life are exciting and extremely rewarding.
Now the intermediate plateau is a very real thing and I think happens to most learners. While it is not the only factor, I can see a link between this plateau and the way you manage your pace. not only burnout but having no strong connection to the knowledge make it flimsy.

On a longer term, you get exponential amount of knowledge input and the ability to use it effectively is where the way you assimilated it will make a difference. Being articulate is the most important in a language, not the amount of knowledge (or how fast you built it).
Now of course I can see positives in going fast and imperfect rather than the opposite.
I like the mass immersion approach, I don’t think rushing kanji and grammar on the other hand is a good strategy at all.

The point I was making is that level achievements (whether it is bunpro, RTK or the so-imperfect JLPT test) can be a very superficial and dangerous self-satisfaction trap. Few years down the road that is not what counts and you could have lost yourself in it.
What these achievements represent is extremely overrated, while patience for some reason is underrated. Plenty of N1-level learners with poor actual speaking skill and the other way around would get confirmed on a daily basis when I was living in Japan.

long answer sorry, and I won’t convert you nor intend to! different people, different approaches :slight_smile:

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#74

I think I can agree, just completing some points doesn’t make me better in an instant, but it gives me the ability to realize them, and after 2-9 encounters of this point in a text it does stick well! When talking about bunpro I say that it is like a hashmap in my brain. I can identify grammar point and usually just find it in less than a minute.
Knowledge of kanji just helps to remember words, but not to much at least on my level.

My point is that learning 6-8 hours/day is not worse, or at least not much worse than 1 or 2 hours a day. Maybe even better if we assume that brain can not forget much with this pece. You can get the same amount of exposure, anki time, a lot of speaking and working on mistakes, but just faster on a scale of the year!

I personally only want to learn languages now, so I’m doing only that (except chatting a lot sometimes, because learning is hard).

#75

I think if you crammed language learning short term, you’d actually do quite well on an exam like the JLPT.
But you would be garbage at understanding the vast majority of real word Japanese conversation, given that both natural understanding, as well as speaking, are entirely untested on the JLPT. So it really depends on your goal.

You could probably turn memorization into understanding much faster than someone who doesn’t have that background, whenever you wanted to understand the language rather than passing an exam.

Personally, I’ve always been exceptionally bad at memorization (as in, I cannot remember the names of main characters in books I am currently reading, in my native language, bad) so I have had to focus on understanding, which means that I started much slower than most people, but I have found that I am now able to ramp up much more quickly now that I’ve gotten over a lot of the pure memorization parts.

The journey really is different for everyone.
I will say, the memorization technique probably does lead to forgetting much later on. When you watch someone like Kauffman try to have a conversation in a language he hasn’t studied in a few years, it’s shocking to see. Obviously, he could re-learn it quickly, but it really shows that if you don’t use it, you lose it.

#76

I don’t think this person is coming back. Oh well.

4 Likes
#77

The idea is not to cram all grammar or kanji for JLPT but to cram them to make input super easy!

That is why input should be included in this 1-year sprint as at least 1/2.
The main point of going fast is to make yourself understand language as fast as possible!

That’s why I’m saying
150h - kanji
450h - grammar
500 - words
1500h - (I guess 1000 will be a really good understanding of most YouTube, and then it depends if a learner wants to struggle more to improve faster) - input
speaking - I don’t know, I have something in my head but it’s incorrect. Probably after all the steps above it’s going to take a few hundred hours to get fluent with mistakes and then a few hundred to get read of most mistakes in a way you like. (I will be testing nl/tl sentences with needed mistakes as avg user of b2 in my theory it’s very efficient. never tested with anything).

I don’t know if this is n1 but it’s definitely will be enough to use it better then average b2 user in another language, I’m pretty sure about that.

#78

It’s just that, memorization and understanding are not considered to be the same thing by most experts on language learning or memory. Forcing a bunch of words into your brain is not the same as comprehension, which is why many people who do it complain that they basically had to relearn a lot when they started trying to actually have conversations.
I have multiple conversations with my Japanese friends daily, but my understanding is relatively high compared to my potential jlpt level because I’ve spent so many hours talking to Japanese people and reading novels.

I also, probably, wouldn’t pass the JLPT, and I have no intention of taking any level of it.

The point is that the JLPT does reward memorization.

But the reason I brought up the JLPT in the first place is because that was what was mentioned in the specific comment about cramming through N1 and then taking the exam; my theory is that it would probably go well. There are plenty of people who want to learn Japanese just to know it / pass the test and say they’re N1, who have no desire to speak to Japanese people and/or no Japanese friends in the first place. It would be fine for them.
Whereas I have never studied a vocab list because I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum.
You, somewhere in the middle, have mentioned that you’re doing this as a speedrun, not for any Japanese specific reason, and you’d have done it with any language that fit your criteria.
It’s just different strokes.

Have you finished Who is She?

1 Like
#79

To get some terms straight…

Memorization is a result. Retention is a result.
Rote memorization is a method of learning through repetition.
Meaningful learning is building upon what you already know.

Rote memorization is okay for foundational learning because you know less, thus have less to build upon. Eventually, you have to stop cramming and start building on what you know.

When you know 免許 means license, and 運転 means driving, you don’t necessarily need to learn that 運転免許 means driver’s license. If you ask which is more meaningful, having 運転免許 as a vocab flash card or seeing it in the wild, most accredited / trained teachers will tell you the later.

Most of this thread is dancing around the technical. The short version is, just using Bunpro to learn is going to be more rote memorization than meaningful learning, which will result in lower retention. But you need to build some basis of knowledge first, and Bunpro’s a great resource for that.

The transition between the two is known to many as the “intermediate wall” :slight_smile:

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#80

I agree with your comments although take issue with this statement specifically. Cramming to pass the test as fast as possible does reward some level of shallow rote memorisation but if you know Japanese to a high level then passing N1 is trivial. The JLPT itself is agnostic on how you study for it. Whether you cram just for the test or you generally learn the language in a practical way and then take the test a bit later on it makes no difference to the test itself. Maybe I’m nitpicking too much here though - I just thought I’d mention it as sometimes beginners read these kinds of threads and think N1 is some insurmountable level that even natives struggle with (which is absolutely false).

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#81

That’s why I included so much of input in a given plan!
memorisation and learning is just for sake of improving comprehension, I think we are talking about same thing no? Studying for improving comprehension, + speaking abilities improves a bit when you know grammar and can correct yourself (but I guess it depends on how each person uses bunpro). Anyway it’s what we are doing here, no? I think we just have some phenomenology differences.
I’m familiar with Crushen’s theories so I know about learning/acquisition thing, and I think my assumptions include it.

No I did about 19/27 and moved back to something a bit more comprehensible and then moved comparatively much harder content and forgot about it 🥲 right now I’m sticking to “language learning” content, but I’ll finish that one day for sure, maybe even on this week

#82

Obvious outcome from even the original post, wanikani has more of these type of threads come through without the person ever actually progressing in the learning material

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