You could always do fewer lessons. 
True. But it takes so long to get through a level in the first place that Iâd be at the very least doubling my time to make it through.
And if reviews could be calculated on a day basis, itâs so much easier to review and say, âYes, Iâm done for the day.â Youâre never truly done when itâs calculated by hours, and it gets to be exhausting, like none of your work means anything. :\
What do you mean by âcalculated on a day basisâ? Do you want all your reviews in a given day to come in at the same time? Do you want the SRS interval to change so the first interval is 24 hours? Something else?
I think what theyâre talking about is the âNext Review: X hoursâ and âNext Hour:â number almost never being 0, so it feels like youâre never finished?
To @eefara, youâre just focusing on the wrong thing, I think. You donât have to do reviews the second they come in. Set one time (or two or three, whatever is comfortable for you) to do your reviews, and just donât do them outside those times. What comes in between those sessions will still be waiting for you later. Not having reviews at 0 doesnât say anything about your progress in this journey of learning Japanese.
4 Likes
Yes, thatâs correct.
Thatâs pretty much the mindset Iâve been working with; itâs really good advice. My only concern is that Iâll never get to review certain grammar points with any depth- itâs kind of gross to say, but my daily review count averages 220 reviews per day. This is after going through all of N4 and selected N5 grammar points, with minimal ghost reviews turned on, and an average accuracy rate of 70%-80%, depending on level. Iâd really like to move on to learning N3, but if the average max number of reviews I clear out each day is something like 40 or 50, Iâm never seeing the bulk of my reviews, and theyâve all regenerated by the next day.
If I start learning N3, thatâll just make the problem worse. Perhaps setting study times by day instead of hour wouldnât solve this problem, but Iâm at a bit of loss on how to proceed or what to suggest. Perhaps if there was an option for targeted reviewing- N5 level only, for instance, or only review grammar points under this level of streak, that could help.
It seems your problem is that you added a lot of lessons in such a short time that none of the points had time to rise in SRS levels very much. As you review them correctly, their SRS lvl will raise and you will see them less and less often, meaning that if you do not add more lessons, your review pile will grow smaller eventually. And when it is small enough, you could start adding new points again, but Iâd suggest adding a lot fewer lessons per day/week.
Currently I have about 20-30 reviews a day total, and I have that amount because Iâve been adding about 3 new grammar points a day for about a week. With my other work load my review amount is becoming too high, so Iâm planing to stop lessons until it drops lower again.
1 Like
My current new grammar point rate is 4/day, for what itâs worth. (Well, not current current I guess, since Iâve just been doing reviews for June.)
I feel like this line of conversation is veering more and more towards my specific situation, which wasnât my original intention; my apologies. The situation I was thinking of when I posted my original post was of a user whoâs trying to keep to a strict timeline while maintaining a low total review count without spending 5 hours on Bunpro every day. This is starting to sound like a âpick 2 but not 3 things you wantâ situation as I type it out, but I thought it couldnât hurt to at least discuss the situation a bit.
With reviews calculated by day and not hour, you could at least give the user the illusion of forward progress, even if itâs not real. Heck, you could even just hide the âNext hour: {reviews}â section on the front page, though I canât say itâs a morale booster to log in later that day to check message boards and see your review total has gone up.
But anyway, that was just one idea; the Bunpro team is free to take it or leave it as they will. Iâll keep using the site regardless of what they want to do. I just figured that this situationâs going to pop up sooner or later for most people.
*sorry if this post is scattered, I literally just woke up xâD
Iâm not so sure you could really get what you want, even if they added that feature, since that seems counter to your goals? You want to learn Japanese as fast as possible, but you want the lowest number of reviews as possible. But reviewing is the only way to learn, and spreading them out so far will slow down your process.
It almost seems like youâd get exactly what you wantâŠif you just did less lessons. If Iâm understanding correctly. Your issue seems to stem from being overwhelmed by reviews. I think if you slow down your lessons (I read you stopped for June, thatâs good.) and put more time into studying what youâre learning, as well as changing your mindset of âhave to do reviews now to get that 0 numberâ, youâd get the result you want.
Thatâs just how learning works though? If you want to plow through Japanese, which you definitely could, you HAVE to put the hours in. There was a guy who made it to N3 in a year, but a big chunk of his schedule EVERY DAY was dedicated to learning.
If you spread out those reviews into days, and not hours, that kind of defeats the process of going fast, imo. You seem to know this though, since you mentioned itâd be an âillusion of forward progressâ.
To be honest, most of this seems like a mindset issue. Where your value of your work comes from seeing that zero, which isnât true! Learning a language is difficult and takes time, especially something like Japanese, which has a LOT to it. Youâve come a long way so far, no doubt. I think you should take some time to reflect on your accomplishments, and let yourself know itâs okay to go slower or take breaks. That zero definitely does not define you.
Thereâs no rush to learn Japanese. Is there a reason you feel you have to go so quickly?
I had a similar situation happen with WaniKani. I think I was around level 15 or so when I crashed. I was starting to feel miserable since I felt like I wasnât getting anywhere. It didnât feel like I was even learning kanji, despite progressing with the website. The thing that fixed it, what might help you, was to read a book.
To be specific, I read a level zero graded reader. I knew it would be way below my level, but I bought it anyway. And reading through those books, it seriously made a difference. It was mostly super basic masu/desu sentences, I had to look up a couple vocab specific to cherry blossoms and beans, but I could read. I saw the kanji, and I knew them. That brought some new fire that I really needed.
Perhaps finding a graded reader, manga, etc., something very simple to tackle would help you as well? So you can actually visualize your progress in a more concrete and rewarding manner?
2 Likes
Thanks for all of your comments! I always enjoy seeing different perspectives, since itâs so easy to get stuck in your own head, as it were.
Ah, sorry, maybe Iâve given the wrong impression. Iâm fine with the number of reviews, but I canât ever seem to get them to go down in any permanent manner. 
Iâve been doing just reviews for about two weeks now; perhaps I just need more time⊠Sorry if I seem to be going back and forth on this; I can try to clarify again if needed.
I think youâre probably right; I donât want to clog up the thread any more than I have going into any depth, but itâs something I need to really sit down and think about.
Hmm. The learning is just a means to an end for me. I donât hate learning, but the faster I reach my goals, the more satisfied Iâll be. Iâm sure thatâs true of everyone; I canât imagine there are many whoâs ideal learning path involves stretching things out.
This is an excellent idea, but itâs one Iâm already trying to do. 
I donât really have enough material for long, extensive reading sessions, though, so I end up reading things (typically manga for the moment) that involve me looking up a lot of vocab. I figure the looking up is just a bump that, if I put in enough time, I can get past.
(Iâm sorry again to the mods for this; none of this is ending up being good suggestions for the siteâŠ)
1 Like
Iâll try to keep my reply short to not derail much more xâD
It might be related to your accuracy? You might just need to take more time to study the grammar in depth. I would for sure look at the associated links/books for the grammar points. See if that helps you.
#1 - Read books in a series. They tend to use consistent styles and vocab. (Unsurprisingly by my username, [which I just noticed my forum title LOL thanks Bunpro xâD] Iâve been going at it with Detective Conan, and I do feel like my speed and understanding is gradually increasing.)
#2 - Floflo: https://floflo.moe/ and https://community.wanikani.com/t/613-transitioning-floflomoe-a-wk-friendly-website-for-reading/30708
Good luck! <3 Feel free to make your own thread later with progress updates. Would be wonderful to hear where you are in a month or so from now 
2 Likes
Thanks for all the tips, conan. Iâll just leave all my comments here and move on; if anyone else would like to chat about the reviewing system, Iâll definitely take a look. Hopefully Iâll have a more useful suggestion to contribute in the future.
Thanks for the kind words! Iâll have to consider it; might be a fun way to keep track of my own progress as wellâŠ
2 Likes
Back to the original suggestion for day bases reviews. One way could be to have a setting for âreview limit per dayâ.
Similar to Anki where you can set a daily maximum of reviews for every deck. So if you have 130 due reviews but you set the limit to 100, Anki shows you âcongrats, you finished for todayâ after 100 reviews, even though there are still 30 due reviews which you donât see.
I like this behavior and Iâm using it for all of my decks so that I spend the same amount of time (on average) for my reviews every day without being overwhelmed by the âtrueâ number of due reviews. The Anki SRS decides which of the overdue cards it will show you, and I think that algorithm works quite well.
So if Bunpro adds a âlimit for daily reviewsâ they will have to think about which reviews are more urgent than others, so that you will see these urgent reviews for sure and less important reviews the next day.
6 Likes
This is definitely something Iâd be interested in. I use this feature with Anki all the time.
2 Likes
I think this resource should be added to ă€ăăă§âs readings list, because it has examples of ăïŒă€ăă㧠for the meaning: âinstead ofâ
Also I think the meaning of âbelievedâ or âthoughtâ should be added, as in this example.
3 Likes
This has probably been suggested before, but I think that having a mode to translate sentences from English to Japanese would be really helpful. This relates to the Instantaneous Composition Method: https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-lessons/japanese-grammar-with-instantaneous-composition-method/
I donât know exactly how hard it would be to implement but I think translating sentences from English to Japanese with the grammar points for reference would be very beneficial in terms of practicing expressing your own thoughts. Of course, there is the problem of unknown vocab and harder grammar points you havenât learned yet being in the sentence, but even if it isnât a mode, even just a list of the learned example sentences in English that can be filtered would be extremely helpful to many people.
2 Likes
Like Google Translator? Letâs see if the BP team can make a better one! Donât worry BunPro, Google only has assets ~$300B that surpass the GDP of several other countries. é ćŒ”ă 
ïŒ
Seriously, not sure if they could just integrate it into BP legally if itâs just a âbetter than nothing featureâ (though GT is free). Unfortunately, GT is not reliable.
1 Like
I meant the user themselves translate the English sentences into Japanese. Sorry, worded it kinda badly. If you click on the link, youâll hopefully see what I mean.
I think they have talked about this but maybe not this literal method. Luckily, they have been really cool with correcting grammar questions on the message board (and adding the message board extensions on the website). There are the community grammar point sections which I think are under-utilized at the moment but we should all use it more to keep our questions organized.
For grammar building, I generally prefer trying to integrate it into the real world to build a stronger memory (writing first -> speaking -> listening) so Iâm getting feedback from a native or advanced learner. Unless it is simple, Iâd still prefer a human translator checking my work if possible 
as I donât entirely trust myself.
I was just poking fun earlier, I mean no harm 
1 Like
One thing I really like about Bunpro is that it often asks you for âother waysâ to say something (e.g. if you input ă«, it often asks you for ăž as well; or if you input éŁăčă, it may ask you to try it more politely as éŁăčăŸă).
What I would like to see, is an option to have Bunpro ask you to put in multiple forms of a single grammar point. For example, the grammar point for âmust notă»may notâ has ăŠăŻăăăȘă as the main entry. But it also lists ăŠăȘăăȘă and ăŠă ă as alternatives.
When reviewing, Bunpro will offer to show you the alternates after a correct answer. What I would like, is the option to have to input the alternatives, just like with the ă«ă»ăž and ăă»ăŸă type of pairs.
Right now, I find it very easy to remember ăŠăŻăăăȘă on the fly, but I stumble on ăŠăȘăăȘă in real-life Japanese because Iâm never forced to study it.
Otherwise, Bunpro is brilliant,âthanks for the excellent work. Iâve been with yaâll since near the beginning and itâs really impressive what youâve done.
5 Likes
I second this. There are many grammar points with 3, 4 or even more alternatives that can be toggled. Would be nice if Bunpro checks previously typed in answers for that grammar point and then ask the user to type in another one the next time that grammar point is reviewed.
4 Likes