Feel like I’m getting “less good” at Bunpro

[Edo9]

Don’t come on to the forums as much anymore, but I do pop in every now and then and read through a few posts. In doing so I can’t help but feel that I’m somehow behind or not doing as well as others.

Currently going through N2 and about halfway through, probably average about 20-30 reviews a day and adding maybe 1-2 new grammar a week on average. Perhaps my approach to it is just slow. I will typically look up words I don’t know, make flashcards, or make other miscellaneous notes as well. I may spend a few minutes looking up and re-reading grammar description and look up other sources as well, including the writing of my own sentences using the grammar. Even reset some grammar I was rusty on recently. Today for example I had 36 reviews, studied for 30 min (pomodoro) and still had 28 at the end of it. Granted, most of the ones I struggled with were newer N2 ones which have been a bit of a thorn at my side.

Now I understand better than anyone that scoring high on a language app that focuses on one specific thing is not necessarily an indication of your real skill level. Yet, I can’t help but feel a little discouraged when someone claims to get through their reviews in like 5 minutes. I know that psychologically we are pre-disposed to boast about our accomplishments and perhaps gloss over other details rather than speak of our downfalls, and the global average seems to reflect that.

But I dunno, when someone says you should be done with 120 reviews in 20 minutes, it certainly makes you feel like you’re not doing something right. I would be shocked if there were not people struggling as much as I am here, but I still need to confirm if it’s not just me for the sake of my sanity. Or am I just a tortoise in a stable of hares?

[veritas_nz]

Don’t let it get to you!
Some users speed-run their reviews, and some users read the entire grammar description with every review they do.

Personally, I did the last 10 levels of Wanikani as fast as was technically possible, and basically nothing went in my brain. Sometimes it’s worth taking it slow.

[CursedKitsune]

Best not to compare yourself to others with these kinds of things (unless you are the extremely competetive type). Everyone uses Bunpro differently so I wouldn’t pay it much mind. E.g., I use it as a service to be reminded of grammar constructions rather than as a place to learn about them so if I fail a review then I take maybe 30 seconds to refresh myself on it before moving on rather than doing a total review. My own personal preference is just to learn things when I come across them in the wild but sometimes you need something like Bunpro to remind you about nuances etc. It also seems totally valid to do a serious review of each grammar point every time it feels even a little bit shaky.

I often see similar problems online with people trying to cram in as much immersion time as possible and yet their progress feels stunted compared to people with less “hours” on paper just because in forcing themselves to do too much they sacrifice quality when getting input. This happens especially often with beginners getting in over their head.

Also, if you haven’t kept fresh or been using the language much then when old points come back they may feel weak and obviously the longer you’ve used the site the more of these old points you’ll have.

Just relax and keep going - that’s the only thing we can do!

[n3knrg]

Learning something is always more efficient when you enjoy it. If people enjoy doing their reviews fast, than its the most efficient way for them. That doesn’t mean it applies to everyone else.

And even though learning a language shouldn’t be a competitive thing, in the end, if it takes you 10 or more years to learn japanese, you will be better than the 99% who tried to speedrun it and failed.

[komocode]

want to feel better?

i’ve been studying Japanese since 2016 and I still can’t pass practice JLPT N5 exams.

[bunnypro]

Going through N2 is way ahead of where many Japanese learners get to, so you’re definitely doing something right

[nekoyama]

@Edo9

when someone says you should be done with 120 reviews in 20 minutes, it certainly makes you feel like you’re not doing something right

I think aiming for a high speed is more common with vocabulary. Where you have a large amount of data that you want to learn, and you want to make full use of the SRS by finding the “easy” items as quickly as possible, filtering out the “too difficult” items as fast as possible, and learning as many items as possible in a short time by focusing on the ones that only take some reasonable effort to learn. In that setting you might not want to take 5 minutes to remember a word or research failed reviews for 5 minutes or something, because that basically becomes a baseline for what the SRS considers “easy-ish” for you to learn. The items I want it to consider “easy” are the ones that come to mind immediately, or the ones that stick after a few reviews. So with vocabulary I’m on the faster side too.

On bunpro it’s a bit different. The amount of data is much smaller. Almost all of it is more important than a single random vocabulary item because unlike vocabulary, grammar is much less domain specific. There’s formal grammar, there’s somewhat old-fashioned grammar, there’s polite and not so polite grammar, there’s written and spoken grammar. But, for example, while the game of Mahjong has a lot of domain vocabulary including an entirely separate way to count and a lot of words with completely separate Chinese readings, there is no “Mahjong grammar”.

Compared to vocabulary, there are much fewer items you’d just want to ignore if they don’t stick. Compared to vocabulary, there are a lot more items that are worth some extra effort.

But what I wrote above about SRS still applies. So there will be people who value speed and the raw amount over perfection on bunpro too. It’s not that there’s one correct way to approach this anyway. People learn differently and they also have different goals. Some might be trying to speedrun to a point where they can read novels (that’s what I tried in the beginning) or watch anime without subtitles, some might be studying for a specific test (where it’s more important to learn the specific things that will appear on it), others might only be interested in conversation, and so on.

I think comparing review speed doesn’t get you anywhere; you might not even be doing the same thing as the other person in the first place.

[Buntebunpou]

I would say that the speed depends on how much you need “rewarding events” (e.g. “Yeah, N3 done!”). I need a high speed to be happy with my learning, e.g. I started learning Japanese the conventional way with kana first and kanji on the go with vocabulary. I hated that, because it was so insanely slow for me. I then stopped everything and learned only kanji for five months until I knew all jouyou kanji. So I had a high speed at learning kanji and a high speed for vocabulary afterwards because there were no kanji to slow me down, I already knew all of them.

With Bunpro it is similar, I try to get done a lot. Started last year in August and now I’m half though with N2. Which I still consider to slow, I wanted to do everthing in one year.

After my experience your approach is more rational and works better. E.g. I really have a lot of trouble with N2 now because a lot of topics are similar to already learned ones and I confuse them with each other all the time.

The only bonus I have is that I don’t waste much time with easy stuff. The downside is that I probably waste a lot of time with the not so easy stuff because I just quickly read the description and memorize them basically more by SRS grinding than understanding.

So it’s not only about speed but also what’s fun to you. If your approach is fun to you, everthing is just fine. People like me who rush through the cards will have much more trouble afterwards when actually using that stuff.

[chickymcface]

I feel the same way! I did pretty okay from N5-N3 but now that I’m into N2 it’s like I “maxed out” my brain; sooooo many ghosts. But little by little, the grammar points seem to move to the next level. I think we’re just in the sloggy part.

[Brux]

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” - Theodore Roosevelt

[rj13]

Can you give an idea of your kanji “knowledge”? From N3 and above (in my head anyway) where it seems like a lot of the grammar points use kanji i find it is extremely helpful to already have known the kanji before. You can much more easily understand the nuance and why the grammar point is used the way it is.

i would say your approach seems a bit slow if you look up every word you don’t know and make flashcards etc. I personally don’t think it is worth it. So many of the sentences on here have kanji/vocabulary that is extremely specific to even sometimes that sentence and it is probably not likely you will see them often elsewhere.

Also in terms of studying for 30 minutes and only doing 8 reviews… imo the main thing isnt the amount of grammar points, it’s probably just the amount of grammar you intake. Every grammar point review sentence will have other grammar points in it. The more you do i think the more you reinforce those other grammar points even though it technically isnt the one you are reviewing. If you are struggling with one or two you can look them up at some other time (coffee break, pointless phone scrolling time etc. ) rather than the time you have dedicated for reviews imo.

I’m not suggesting “speedrunning” japanese or whatever that means but i would probably rethink the addition of so many other things you now have to review (flashcards, notes) which will take up more of your time

[simias]

For every language (and most skills really) you hit diminishing returns as you get towards more advanced things. It’s true for kanji, vocab but also grammar of course.

If you’ve covered everything up to N3 then you know the overwhelming majority of day-to-day Japanese. That doesn’t mean that N2/N1/N0 won’t be useful, of course not, but it’s just that at this point it takes a lot of work to make a small difference in your ability to understand and speak Japanese.

But the good news is that at this point you should be able to focus on consuming Japanese content that you enjoy and use it for practice. Getting 1000h of practice doing flashcards and textbook exercices is very tedious and requires a lot of discipline, getting 1000h of practice doing things that you enjoy will be much easier.

So my advice would be to slow down on Bunpro if you feel like things don’t stick anymore, and focus of reading/listening to Japanese then use that to guide your learning process. When you encounter something you don’t understand, look it up on bunpro and start the item if you haven’t already.

I mean what’s the point of learning a grammar point that you don’t encounter regularly in practice? It’s just a waste of time IMO, especially since you’re likely to forget it by the time you actually need it.

Wanikani is annoying for this because you can’t pick and choose what to learn, which is a good system early on but becomes very frustrating when you start tackling rarer kanji. Bunpro has no such limitation however, you can learn whatever you like in any order.

[8bg]

I don’t think I could stand to have any more than ~15 reviews per day on Bunpro, so i’m okay with a turtle pace. Perhaps that’s also because I’m doing WaniKani at the same time, and average around 120 a day there.

[ThePurpleOrange]

I had this issue with Wanikani - got to around level 27 but it felt like a grind due to the vocab I was learning not being used.

I exported my kanji reviews and switched to using mining vocab from stories I intend on reading and have found it much more motivational. There is also the advantage of seeing the word being learnt in action.

[simias]

Yeah I hit a similar wall in the ~30s, I intend to finish it eventually but it’s on the back burner now, I’m focusing on actually reading Japanese content + Bunpro now.

The fact that WK has a fixed progression is good early on I think, for people like me who start from basically zero it means that you don’t have to worry about what to learn and in what order, you just keep doing the lessons WK feeds you and you make quick progress.

But now I know around 1500 kanji, I am familiar enough with the whole thing to decide which kanji are useful to me right now and which ones can wait. But it won’t let me do it. That’s pretty frustrating sometimes.

[ThePurpleOrange]

Yeah, pretty much exactly that - initially it was loads of help and I wouldn’t have got anywhere without it, but after a while I wanted to pick my own vocab to learn words in subjects I was interested in.

I think I recognise your name from the forum now - didn’t notice at first!

[Daru]

Hey! This really resonates with me, and I literally work at Bunpro.

You really can’t compare your progress to others. It’s an unfair comparison by default. You’re comparing the innermost part of yourself to your perception of others, which you just don’t have a full picture of. So, in a way, you’re judging yourself negatively from an incomplete and unfair perception of everyone else.

Progress will keep happening as long as you keep moving. If today’s you is a lil’ more 上手 than yesterday’s you, then you’re well on your way.

Big hug. You got this, just focus on yourself! Japanese learning is not a race.

[Edo9]

Wow, I didn’t expect to get so many replies. This indicates to me that I am not alone in how I feel at times.

The biggest take aways I got from the replies were:

-Don’t compare yourself to others, Japanese isn’t a race.

(I’m definitely better about this now. On the outside I am not a highly competitive or jealous person, but I sometimes let the emotional side of me take over. I had a moment of weakness here.)

-You’re only comparing yourself to your perception of others.

(So true, in my mind if people are ahead of me that may or may not be the case. In the past when I participated in study groups, it was easier to see who was ahead or behind you because I got to interact with these people face to face. There were those who might have been good a tests and remembering Kanji, but would stay dead silent at those sessions when it came to speaking. Online, we simply have no idea if people are being truthful or leaving out details.)

-Study at your own pace and what works for you.

(Always have, will probably keep going that way)

-Speedrunning Japanese is not ideal.

(Not gonna say it won’t work for others but I know it won’t work for me. If someone discovers a full-proof secret I’ll take it. Many youtubers claimed that they have, but it’s different when you’re trying to get monetized.)

-Focus on consuming content instead of focusing on Bunpro

(I do consume content everyday. I read articles, manga, watch TV and play videogames in Japanese, and I do add new words and grammar constantly. Over the course of the past couple years I have added grammar from all levels.)

Thanks to everybody for the feedback. If Japanese wasn’t fun for me, I wouldn’t be here, and if Japanese was easy everyone would do it. And until they invent one of the Matrix thingamajigs where you can learn a language by putting a tube into that back of your neck, it’s grammar by grammar, word by word, phrase by phrase.

Study hard, study well, and have a great night.

[Sidgr]

Everyone has very good points. There is a piece that may have been overlooked as well. A lot of the inflation of pace are coming the vocab learning and not grammar learning. It is much easier to grind 120 vocab in 20 minutes, it’s impossible to do that for grammar in any reasonable way.

Beyond that I totally understand your feelings.

[monkeytunes]

@Edo9, feel free to compare to me: I’ve been studying Japanese off-and-on since 2006, worked my way through both Genki I and II, attempted Remember the Kanji multiple times, and have been using Bunpro and WaniKani since 2018 and I’m still terrible. I do my reviews on both platforms down to 0 daily, my spouse and kids are Japanese/hafu and speak Japanese daily, we watch TV Japan almost exclusively in this house, I try to help my kids with their nihongo shukudai, and yet I’m still making the extremely slow progress that I make. The only reason my level on Bunpro is even where it is is because I think there’s a bug where if you un-burn items (and I’ve reset all of N5 before) it doesn’t roll your score back and you can still get the points again.

Some other examples to consider, which may not apply to you specifically, but I think are useful in keeping perspective: I teach music, and something I have to remind my students of is that not only are you getting better at playing the music, but you’re getting better at recognizing your mistakes. Students will practice and practice and get frustrated because they think they’re sounding worse than ever. But what’s actually happening is their ear is getting better, they are increasing their aural acuity - their fluency with sound and perception - and are therefore better able to pick out that something is wrong, even if they’re not immediately sure how to fix it. I think it’s similar to language learning, and part of the journey is your ear or eyes telling you ‘something doesn’t feel right here’ even if you don’t know why.

In smaller bursts, this often happens with students that have been away from their instrument for a bit: they’ll pick it up, maybe feel some physical discomfort from their playing muscles atrophying a bit, but otherwise be pleasantly surprised at how decent they still sound. Then after a week or two, they’ll come to me exasperated, ‘somehow I’m getting worse!’

Well, no, silly, you’re not getting worse, your ears are readjusting to picking out mistakes and intonation issues. As your muscles get back into shape, so does your ability to pick out inconsistencies and ever-more-detailed variances from The Perfect Sound. The same thing happens to me with WaniKani and Bunpro after I’ve been on vacation mode for awhile - I come back feeling good and ripping through piles of reviews…but the stuff I’ve forgotten or didn’t really lock in is lost and it’s frustrating to suddenly have every review session be stuff I don’t know but thought I did. The magic and the tragedy of SRS, it’s constantly showing you the stuff you’re bad at.

There’s probably something to be said for Dunning-Krueger Effect, too - perspective is vastly different from when someone first goes around konnichiwa-ing and hajimemashite-ing and having early, rapid successes versus having a real idea of what it means to try to read a light novel or listen to TBS podcasts or wander around Book-Off in Tokyo. At the beginning, you can just chalk it all up to ‘well , there’s the bucket of all the stuff I don’t know’ but after years, you have a sizeable bucket of stuff you DO know but the bucket of stuff you still don’t know is still infinite. I guess with infinity, no matter how much you chip away at it, it’s still infinite.

There might also be some Survivorship Bias here - you are comparing yourself to the people posting on Bunpro, but the people using Bunpro and are confident enough to post definitive nihongo answers are obviously the RAF planes that made it back. The sample set that you’re comparing yourself to is not normal or representative, and you’re only reading about their successes and/or the things they’re confident discussing. This is why I don’t use Instagram, because boy do I feel like garbage when I see everyone’s handpicked Best Moments of Awesomeness decorated with washboard abs. Also - you have no way of knowing what is a normal or representative sample set to compare yourself to, if one even exists. People will happily post what JLPT level they passed, but the legions of us failures that vastly outnumber them will keep our shameful mouths shut.

Anyway - slowpokes unite, and no matter how awful I still am/we still are at Japanese, odds are I can point to almost any non-Japanese person on Earth and say ‘my Japanese may not be good, but it’s way better than yours.’ It just so happens there’s a high concentration of people who can beat those odds here on Bunpro. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.