Feedback - Suggested Improvements/Feature Request

Please add an additional “New Vocab Lesson” button to the dashboard like how the grammar and vocab reviews are seperated. Then it just links to a bookmarked deck.

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I have a suggestion for a future update. Though this may be difficult to implement. In my Japanese language school, we have practice were we learn ways to communicate and respond in different situations. Specifically because culturally we will probably think to respond differently than what might be expected as polite in Japanese society.

For instance, the following example is a general way to refuse a friend.


Then here is an example prompt and conversation:

Prompt:
会話2:友人への断り
あなたは友人の田中さんにパソコンを貸してほしいと頼まれました。
田中さんのパソコンがこわれてしまったので、週末だけ貸してほしいと言っ
ています。
あなたもプレゼンの準備があるで貸すことができません。
ていねいに断ってください。

Conversation:
会話2:友人への断り
A:ねえ、田中さん、ちょっといい?
B:うん、いいけど、何? A:実は、週末、パソコンを貸してもらえないかなあと思って。。。
B:えっ、週末?どうして?
A:私のパソコンがこわれてしまって。。
B:そうか、事情はわかるけど。。。ごめん、今は無理。 (共感してから断る) 私もプレゼンの準備があるんだ (理由)
A:そうか、わかった。
B:学校に相談したほうがいいんじゃない? (代案を言う)
A:そうだね、相談してみるよ、ありがとう

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Hi guys. Is it possible to have an option that makes all information text more straightforward?
Like here:
image

I don’t see the point of the phrase “are often used as 接尾語せつびご (suffix)”. I would rather just see “are often used as a suffix”.

Maybe for more advanced people, it’s nice to have some Japanese mixed with an explanation but I would rather it was more straight to the point and all in English.

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I have to hard disagree on this, because while often the words line up, they do not always and it’s critical to understand exactly what is stated and what is not being state in the explanations. This is specifically what I pay for.

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That’s why I suggested an option to toggle it off.

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Maybe someone can point me to the correct page if I am wrong, but I can’t really seem to find anything on よね on bunpro. Basically, I was trying to find more of an explanation on it because it seems like then meaning can vary based on the situation. I am running into this in my class and talked to a tutor about it yesterday. But a concrete set of explanations would be great.

The problem I’ve noticed is sometimes its used to sympathize. Sometimes it is used to agree. Sometimes its used to share new information when you want the other party to agree. But I have a hard time distinguishing when I should you よね vs よ vs ね so I assume others may as well.

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I’m not sure if this has been suggested yet (I haven’t seen anything about it in the forum), but I would like to have a training mode specifically for verb usage.

I know we already have some in the reviews, but this would focus on verb usage as I never know which verb to use in certain situations.

For example, which verb should I use to say:

  • to “send” a card
  • to "take out the garbage
  • to “get off” at the next station

Sometimes it’s not obvious, for example, to say “to play a game” I might be tempted to use “あそぶ” where I should rather use “ゲームをする”.

It would also be a great way to help with transitive/intransitive usage (which is already done in reviews, but not enough!).

It would have the same form as the grammar reviews, but you would have to guess the verb (in the right form) without any hint!

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I don’t know if you already saw it, but よね is explained in the よ page. But I don’t know if it’s enough information for you.

Anyway, this could be a new grammar point to have more examples and maybe a more complete explanation.

2 Likes

I totally agree!
I think the word you’re looking for is maybe “collocation”? Where specific words are commonly used together (very often Noun + Verb pairs). I have a whole flashcard deck I’ve made of them.

But yeah I also have trouble with stuff like this – in particular whether some verbs are transitive vs. intransitive, and if they require 「に」 vs 「を」 (the one I always get wrong is 飽きる :sweat_smile:).

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Something I find troublesome is when I learn a new grammar point, the example questions can seem to be a more advanced version of the grammar point. I see that it takes from the sample sentences, but sometimes it can be quite difficult for someone who learns a little bit of the grammar point at a time.

For example when I was learning すぎ my first question was “その冗談は面白おもしろくなさすぎた.” While yes, it does have sugi, it’s hard to isolate the exact point because it’s crammed in with other grammar points that make it harder to see sugi in particular, as well has having a unique aspect to it that isn’t normally used (being なさ).

It may just be a small issue for me, but it caused me great frustration when trying to learn it. it’s happened with several other grammar points as well, but that one caused me particular pain.

My suggestion is maybe have a simple sentence for initial exposure as a default instead of getting a rather hard example as a first exposure.

Edit: my keyboard is going out, so some letters didn’t come through. fixed most of them.

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I was just thinking about this earlier, and people have already suggested it some time back: a download audio feature would be nice. I do go into the grammar sentences tab individually to listen to the sentence audio since listening to small bites of Japanese on repeat helps my listening comprehension.

Also, and I know people have suggested it already, audio for the vocab words would be helpful. I’m not going to suggest audio for the vocab sentences, too because that would be WAY too much.

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I came here to say this! Thank you for pointing it out!

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+1 this, maybe re-order the sentences for some grammar points.

Equally, sometimes the sentences during reviews are for idiomatic uses or common collocations that maybe aren’t obvious just from having studied the lesson. This is fine if you’re exposed to a lot of Japanese so have seen the pattern/expression before but I am certain it can be confusing if you haven’t. Maybe add a marker or something for those sentences that tells the user that the usage is idiomatic or a common expression that isn’t necessarily intuitive if you haven’t seen it before?

(also +1 on all the chat about adding some sort of collocations deck)

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Is it possible to add a “back” button to the reviews section? Every time I hit enter by accident and move onto the next question before seeing the answer to the one I was working on, I get so frustrated I want to quit. :cry:

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Undo feature is in the pipeline at the mo!
Hopefully not too far away

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Was really hoping this was going to be the big update that’d pulled me back. However, I just tried the Vocab beta and frankly to me, this is the same as before hand just with a nicer interface. It’s just guess what you see and you better know it. To answer, type or don’t. That’s it.

Where’s some multiple choice, or translate English words into their Japanese equivalent with pictures, or drag and drop bubbles that are the Japanese words split up. This is why I just keep going to other apps because when I want to review/study vocab specifically the site here pushes on the assumption that I should just “know it” not help slowly reinforce it to memory.

I know I’m requesting a different method of learning that isn’t desired here/different but I’m just giving the feedback to what I was hoping for. Do your own thing obviously but if these different methods of learning vocab is ever planned please let me know.

Hey is there any way we can see SRS data in a graph form for how many reviews are coming up? I know we can see what points are available soon, but I’d like to judge whether I should add more to the queue or plow thru like 60 if they are coming up in a day.

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There are some charts on your dashboard that show upcoming reviews for the day and week: https://bunpro.jp/dashboard

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Thank You BP Team for all the amazing things you do to help us on our Japanese journey. I have a bit of a rant. Today Wanikani released an update, which has caused a bit of a stir over there. I don’t want to get into that here, but because of that update, I’m considering other places to learn kanji.

I really wish you could make a WK equivalent that is incorporated into your very own BP ecosystem. If so, please give a nudge. ^^

~dissatisfied WK user

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Could we include all grammar points from Try textbooks?

For example, I couldn’t find the N3 grammar point "~なさそうだ even when searching in all grammar and vocab.

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