The nice thing about those kinds of conjugation drills is that - and maybe this is a bit of anathema to a site that is literally drilling grammar, but - it eventually gets you so familiar with the conjugated verb that you stop conjugating it and simply employ the word/phrase/sentence as its own stand-alone entity. To wit: I heard the theory a long time ago that in our native languages, while we start by conjugating things (I hear little kids say things like “I eated it” or “I knowed it”) we eventually get so familiar with the conjugated forms in context that we simply treat the conjugated words as vocab (so we don’t think of “ate” as eat-past-tense, but as its own vocab word to describe when eating occurred), and eventually whole phrases as vocab (Which is why the homonym “eight <-> ate” would never trip us up, because we know the phrase “I eight it” isn’t part of our vocab, except in puns, which is what brings humor to such things). So, like, we develop a “vocab of phrases”, or a “conceptual vocab”, like, vocab to convey an entire concept instead of a single definition, until we can treat nearly complete sentences as vocab. In theory.
(Incidentally, jazz/improv training is supposedly similar; virtuosos get so familiar with how notes sound together and how chord changes progress that they don’t think about individual notes, or even how one chord moves to another through harmonic theory and cadences, but can craft an entire melodic phrase - a whole, complete, developing thought or motif - that resolves and interacts with the harmonic base ((or even purposefully doesn’t)). In other words, they’ve experimented and played so many notes so many times in so many iterations and against so many harmonies, that they don’t need to think about “a-7 → D7 → GMaj7”, and you’ll hear anyone with jazz training speak in a shorthand - “two five one turnaround” or “tritone sub” or “rhythm changes” - to describe jazz grammar or patterns or entire formats that they expect other players to have fluency with. Then they can simply play/speak fluently, and at that level of proficiency the artistry is not who can play the most correct notes, but who can truly craft something new out of the notes/words everyone’s speaking.)
This is why I love the Custom Sentence and Cram so much on this site, because while I like the puzzle of thinking through the grammar and watching things change, I want to get to that level of fluency where I have entire phrases/sentences at my disposal, and am not slowed down by thinking through “how do I say ‘I didn’t eat?’ taberu → tabenai → tabenakatta”; I want the entire lick/phrase/motif at my disposal. And so drill games like that, where I’m being exposed to conjugated forms and their concepts over and over again (as opposed to having the grammar point and then being left to work through it myself), are ideal. I’m hoping to eventually develop ‘an ear for things’. Like, in English, I never even heard of ‘adjective order’ until a year or two ago, but it I am so familiar with English that I know saying “old, blue, big house” sounds off, and the natural way to say it is “big, old, blue house”. This is why I’m always like “more sentences!”, even on the ‘easy’ stuff, and would love if we could dictate our review cadence on sites like this and WaniKani. I want to develop an ear for Japanese, not just the tools to craft it.
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. I will add it to a few of the different conjugation heavy grammar points today.