Feedback - General

Ah, I might be asking for a lot, but I’m currently reviewing N5 for the JLPT and there’s some serious kanji usage that is way too advanced for N5. I know you can toggle furigana but it doesn’t seem that it works for general grammar (study page / first part of the grammar units, but in the sentences it does).

It feels like it turns into a hunt trying to find how to pronounce the grammar vs being able to read it super quick!

Thank you for your feedback! When we created each JLPT level we made sure that we only included vocabulary specific to that JLPT. However, some of the kanji associated with this vocabulary can be from a higher JLPT level. We wanted to give you the most authentic experience as possible by including the kanji associated with the vocabulary if that is typically how it appears in everyday Japanese and allowing you to toggle on/off the furigana when you may not know the reading. We have tried not to include difficult kanji/vocabulary in the structure/meaning section of each grammar point, but we realize that this portion of the site could also benefit from having the ability to toggle on/off furigana and we will see about implementing it soon. Cheers!

EDIT: While we tried our best to be careful with what we added, we may have inadvertently added vocabulary that is inappropriate for a particular JLPT level. If you find any such cases, please do not hesitate to let us know so that we can update Bunpro and make it more comprehensive for everyone.

I’m not sure if it’s on the to-do list already, but little hints/notes on the differences of “should have/would be better to” and all those grammar points would be lovely! I keep mixing them up x’D

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We are working on that!
Which points are you mixing?

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Awesome! Thank you ^^
The ones I mix up are ばいい、ばよかった、ほうがいい、and probably some other one I’m forgetting xD

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Very short explanation:
Aばよかった、means if I did A, it would have been good. It is used when you regret something, and you describe the hypothetical alternative which you should have chosen back then.
Something like, I should have bought a bitcoin.(I regret it, because I would be rich now).

ばいい/たらいい
Is used to give the most emphatic advice. It is often used when asking for advice as どうすればいい?
(what is a good thing to do?)

Sentence:
合格したいのなら勉強すればいい。

たらどう(たらどうですか)
Is also used when giving advice or more like a suggestion, but it might be interpreted as rude(reproach!) because it means “what if you did…”. So use this one if someone actually asked you for an advice. Notice that unlike ばいい you are not actually saying that doing something is good. So it is more roundabout way to suggest something, you can say it is close to “try doing it, it might be fine(but I don’t really know!”.
この洋服をかってみたらどう

You can achieve similar effect of suggestion by using ば、なら、たら alone(with question tag). (very weak suggestion)
A:彼女は許してくれるかな?
B:キスしてあげるなら。。。

ほうがいい
Is the tricky one, because you should use past tense for affirmative sentences, and non-past negative for negative sentences. (actually, you CAN use non-past, it will be weaker advice, but it is not that common)
In addition, it is much stronger suggestion that other options, it is like saying you better do something(or it might end badly for you!).
So you can use it when your friend has unbalanced died, and you want to tell him, you better eat some veggies! (or something bad might happen to you, like hospitalization)

If you want to be more polite, you can use と思う、でしょうか、のではないでしょうか etc
たらどうですか。
たらどうでしょうか。
ばいいと思います。
ばいいのではないでしょうか。etc

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Oooh thank you so much! :smiley: I’ll definitely be adding these to my notes, haha.

Actually, I won’t. Doesn’t seem like I can piggyback on the site’s code and use the same player, and coding my own player is too much of a hassle. I’ll just leave it as the HTML audio player.

https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/27

All of the examples use present tense conjugation, perhaps it would be good to have a mixture of examples using negative and past tense conjugations to reinforce learning.

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Great catch!
I will add not only negative version but a more detailed explanation of this grammar point in near future.

Quick note:
With a group of words ている doesn’t mean a progressive action, but a state.
Movement words:
来る(くる)帰る(かえる)行く(行く)
instead of coming, coming back, going will mean being at a goal of movement.
So ロンドンに来ている。 Means I am in London(I have come to London(and I am still there)) instead of I am coming to London.
ロンドンに行っている。 Means I am in London(I have gone to London(and I am still there)) instead of I am going to London.
ロンドンに帰っている。Means I am in London(I have returned to London(and not a surprise, I am still there :slight_smile: )

[If you really want to say that you are going you can use N2 grammar, つつある、行きつつある。it will appear soon]

The words that depict the change from one state from another(you can easily spot them by their English translations which include words like become, get, putetc like: become fat太る, become thin痩せる, to get fired up燃える, to get to know知る, to put on着る, to open 開ける, become になる.
So accordingly, instead of ~ing, those will mean: to be fat, to be thin, to burn, to know, to wear, something is opened, something is.

Also, there is already grammar point for past tense:
https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/136

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Oh I see, that sense now. Thank you.

Check the post above, I have added a short explanation.

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Thanks! Much better.

Thank you very much for the recent changes to ghost reviews! I was just contemplating how to write a feature request asking to be able to turn off ghost reviews, so I was delighted to read the most recent changelog.

Actually, I think your idea of allowing a “Minimal” mode for ghost review creation is even better :slight_smile:

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How do you handle large review queues? Do you randomize the order or is there some prioritisation going on? I think up to a certain point it makes sense to have it completely randomised, but the number surpasses the number of reviews the user does daily I think it might be better to prioritise the most overdue reviews. That is to the point where the number get so high where the user couldn’t finish them all in a week or two, when I think it might be better to treat it as a backlog and prioritise the least overdue reviews.

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@Jake What is your general policy for when to require full grammar in the answer and when you give some of it away. I just did a review where the sentence ended with 安く見える. I only had to answer with みえる since 安く was given. However, knowing to convert adjectives to adverbs is part of the grammar point, so shouldn’t you require us to fully type やすくみえる?

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This is an excellent observation. Currently, reviews appear at random in your review queue. We will see what we can do to prioritize items that are overdue. Thank you for your suggestion. Cheers!

@seanblue We do not necessarily have any sort of policy on how we quiz you on a particular grammar point. However, we believe that providing you with varying degrees of difficultly forces you to pay closer attention to what surrounds the grammar point, not just the grammar point itself. Sometimes we will ask you to provide additional information, such as the adjective in your example, but we also want you to be able to immediately associate certain conjugations/alterations with certain grammar points. That being said, we are constantly updating Bunpro with alternative answers and changing how we quiz you. Cheers!

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@mrnoone I think you should change this N4 sentence so it doesn’t use the [よう]とする grammar (which is N3). The sentence is for たところ.

お茶を飲もうとしたところティーバッグがないと分かった。[する]

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Is there a reason why you use the orange text in the example sentence but not the study question? Grammar point 90.

image

image

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It was used that way to point past tense, but wasn’t consistent with later sentences. I made it uniform now.
Thank you for pointing it out!