Feedback from a new user

[westing]

@CursedKitsune

Just on the topic of learning grammar and SRS etc, I think there needs to be a line drawn between learning a grammar point and remembering it. I would argue that SRS should be used purely to remember something, as a reminder that it exists, and act as a context rich anchor from which you can recall the meaning of something when you see it next in real life (as gnome says). The fact that Bunpro has a lot of hints and nudges is fine by me as the point isn’t for me to be perfect during Bunpro reviews, although I try, but rather just to remind me that something exists so that when I next see it in a book or something I either grasp it immediately or I notice it and go look it up. It is when reading (or whatever) that the actual learning happens. I only mention this since I guess it is possible to approach Bunpro/SRS as a place to learn grammar as a whole which, even as someone who broadly likes Bunpro, I think is not a good method (personally).

The problem is that the nature of Bunpro is backwards for this. IMO, its grammar explanation pages are much more useful than the SMS. I guess Bunpro’s “arbitrary English cue card → Japanese fill in the blank” style of exercise could possibly be useful for production, but it’s certainly not going to be helpful for comprehension or for the JLPT.

If you actually want to drill grammar understanding the way you say, you would want the opposite kind of exercise, where Bunpro shows you the grammar in Japanese and you have to recall all the other information, meaning, nuance, conjugations, etc.

@CursedKitsune

I thought more about your situation and finding “grammar” to be a sticking point and I guess it may just be a case of needing to read/listen more to get things to stick and experience them in context in the wild? I can’t say because I don’t know your study habits but I can say that the gap between each N-level is basically double the previous one, in my experience. I think this is why lots of people get to N4/N3 and then stop learning or stagnate as you need to do basically all the effort of N5 to N3 again to get to N2 and then all the effort of N5 to N2 to get to N1 (and then all the effort of up to N1 to actually become okay at the language). If the goal is to consume Japanese TV or something and not to pass the JLPT then I also wouldn’t beat yourself up over “grammar” that doesn’t stick due to not being used to seeing it as clearly it isn’t important for whatever you are using the language for.

I clearly have picked up some grammar ability via immersion. It’s just that grammar is the hardest thing to pick up via immersion, for the reasons I alluded to in my previous post. The result is that my grammar is always a level behind everything else. I’ve taken a number of practice JLPT exams of varying levels over the years, and grammar has always been my worst section at every level.

The reason is twofold:

1. grammar is only sometimes important for comprehension, so immersion doesn’t stretch that muscle much and
2. even if you can recognize grammar in context, that doesn’t mean you can mean you can remember the exact conjugation details or distinguish it from plausible-looking incorrect grammar, which is what the JLPT demands.

As an analogy, consider how you can easily recognize a word while reading from the general shape and context, even if when given two versions of the word side by side, one with an extra line added to one of the kanji, you can’t tell for sure which one is correct. Grammar has the same problem, but it’s a lot worse.

[zeron]

@westing

The problem is that the nature of Bunpro is backwards for this. IMO, its grammar explanation pages are much more useful than the SMS. I guess Bunpro’s “arbitrary English cue card → Japanese fill in the blank” style of exercise could possibly be useful for production, but it’s certainly not going to be helpful for comprehension or for the JLPT.

If you actually want to drill grammar understanding the way you say, you would want the opposite kind of exercise, where Bunpro shows you the grammar in Japanese and you have to recall all the other information, meaning, nuance, conjugations, etc.

You mentioned earlier that you tried the setting where you read the sentence and self-grade. I’m a little confused because is that not exactly what you’re looking for here and solve all your problems mentioned in the OP? The JP sentence+self grade is a pretty recent development for Bunpro - there’s a blog post by the devs somewhere here where they recommend the option for learners looking to maximize their immersion because it is only Japanese and not the English cue cards/hints that is the default. I use it and through my own testing, reading short articles/passages, answering sample questions (I use the 新にほんご500 series of books - would also recommend these), etc. I’ve found it has dramatically increased my reading comprehension.

To be honest, even prior to Bunpro offering the read/review SRS, it’s been probably the single most important platform to my Japanese learning experience next to Anki, and even there Bunpro has entered the fray by allowing you to SRS vocab too. Barring maybe wanikani which I could not get into, it’s probably the closest thing that replaces traditional textbooks for me, although I have number of those as well.

[imsamuka]

@CursedKitsune

In my personal experience this is an illusion; I’ve had it dispelled multiple times. Obviously you can follow the broadstrokes of something with some basic knowledge and vocab, especially something with a visual element like TV, but I think it is pretty common to “not know what you don’t know” when it comes to grammar/expression. I have Japanese friends who will say なんとなくわかる of English and then when I ask them what it means it turns out they have missed the point. It goes the other way as well. Obviously this is unrelated to how to learn though.

If it’s not too much off topic, could you speak a little more about this? I have been thinking about it these days but I don’t have much insight on this yet… It seems you consciously realized it happening to your japanese comprehension multiple times, so can you also give a few examples?

I have been reading some manga recently (both intensive and extensive i guess) and i thought i had i good understanding of what was being said on some places; but after learning half of n4 grammar and coming back, it seems i got a lot of the meaning considerably wrong. So sometimes i get a little worried about my own confidence even on “simple” phrases, specially those with tons of hiragana, where it’s hard to differentiate where words end and start, along with particles. I guess this will get better if i study my weaker grammar points more extensively, and practice reading more, but I’m curious about it.

[CursedKitsune]

I don’t really have especially coherent thoughts on this but my entirely unresearced theory is that since we are so good at finding meaning in things we convince ourselves of some interpretation based of off very little information. Like have you ever seen a kid making up a story for a book when they can’t read properly?

In early stages of learning just being able to follow a story is a big achievement (and rightly so) and it is easy to trick oneself into thinking that because you can follow the story that you understand most of what is being said. It probably isn’t true. I think we do a pretty good job of ignoring what we don’t understand and filling in the cracks without noticing.

In the more intermediate stages I would say the problem is one of not knowing what one needs to look out for. I think you need to either see the same thing a lot of times when immersing extensively or you need to really question everything very closely when doing intensive immersion (“Okay, they used が here but は is grammatically acceptable so why did they use が and not は?” etc). The answers might not always be that deep but it will lead to a more acute sense of what you are “whitenoising”.

Obviously comprehension is not something that is black and white which is what makes this problem particularly insidious. The two contexts in which make me realise what I am missing in terms of comprehension the most are when re-watching or re-reading and just during conversation. When re-watching or re-reading, normally after a few months, I will notice so many things that I didn’t catch the first time. It also makes me realise that I have improved (when I feel like my ability never changes) so it is a good exercise. On the side of conversation, you are really forced to consider if you understand something as you have to reply. If you don’t understand properly then your reply will be nonsense. If you are speaking with a friend they will probably rephrase what they said and you will realise your error. If you are speaking with a stranger then they will probably just nod politely and say 日本語上手 (I am only half-joking).

Another reason why this situation comes about is probably comes about is the fact that expression and expressive ability are a lot more complicated than the basic version found in grammar resources. Bunpro is one of the more fairly comprehensive resources but it wouldn’t be possible to include everything.

As you get better obviously this kind of thing happens less but it is just part of learning the language. The flipside is that if you don’t understand something now then that too will also become comprehensible after some time without you really noticing. That’s probably the nice version of this effect.

My final thought on this, which maybe people won’t agree with, is that if you compare your comprehension to your native language you will realise how bad it is even if you can follow everything. If you had to write a standard high school essay on something like “How does the author create tension in this scene?” or something then could you do it as well as you could in your native language? Some people might say this is unfair as a metric but if your goal is to have a high level of Japanese then being able to write a high school style essay is actually a low measure (depending on your educational background). My own big goal is to be C2+ so being quite strict about exact understanding makes sense but you can enjoy a lot of media without getting close to that level so at a certain point the question of precision when understanding things is just personal.

Sorry this was a brain dump - I have never put my thoughts together on this before. It is a good topic though.

[imsamuka]

Thank you, that’s a more extensive answer than what i was expecting, and very good info to keep in mind. It really gives a lot of meaning to diversifying your study methods in a sense, reading something you already read before, reading both with very extreme intensive immersion and also extensive or talking to people or writing high school essays lmao.

@CursedKitsune

it is easy to trick oneself into thinking that because you can follow the story that you understand most of what is being said. It probably isn’t true. I think we do a pretty good job of ignoring what we don’t understand and filling in the cracks without noticing.

I assume re-reading or re-watching something you have already seen translated in your native language makes this problem a lot worse, since instead of actually trying to understand what is actually being said, your brain can cheat and take everything it possibly can from memory in your native language; tricking you into thinking you understood a lot more than what you really did…

[CursedKitsune]

@imsamuka

I assume re-reading or re-watching something you have already seen translated in your native language makes this problem a lot worse, since instead of actually trying to understand what is actually being said, your brain can cheat and take everything it possibly can from memory in your native language; tricking you into thinking you understood a lot more than what you really did…

Yeah pretty much that is my experience. I started immersion with Terrace House. I would watch some episodes first with English subs and then with Japanese subs. When I look back at those same episodes now I realise how much I missed even with the advantage of having “fully understood it in English” first. Japanese is just so different that English subs are very far away from the original (grammatically and also ignoring certain cultural things/jokes).

However giving yourself as much help as possible to make input comprehensible is extremely important. You have to get the broadstrokes before you get the finer details just by necessity so I still absolutely would encourage people to use whatever they feel they understand and enjoy best as immersion material.