stuff like cram i would suggest just clicking and getting lost for about 5 or so minutes, most stuff is pretty simple and easy to pick up. but if you do have any questions feel free to make or thread or something, because it’s likely someone out there will have the same question! i can’t imagine using bunpro without cram haha
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- Most confusing: Which grammar items to add, and how many to add per day. Fortunately, I read about the troubles others had run into so I didn’t add too many in my first week.
- Value: I decided to give myself a month to see whether this would be worthwhile. Within two weeks, I was convinced as I had started remembering grammar points that I had made multiple prior attempts at learning.
- Took too long to figure out: The purpose of the Oobs button.
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One intimidating thing was that there’s so many options without much guidance as to which ones to choose at the beginning or what options are suggested for each user. Of course, this is one of the great things of the site – that you can customize this site to your needs.
I thought the SRS was a little confusing only because I didn’t understand how the ghosts worked with the spacings. (I see the ghosts as kinda breaking out of the SRS system to give you more practice.)
Everything else, I just kept clicking on things until I figured it out.
Value:
– SRS for grammar – amazing, no other site does it
– comprehensive – most grammar points in one convenient spot
– community – maybe not a hard “feature” but certainly something that kept drawing me back – to learn from and interact with so many other Japanese language enthusiasts
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Oh yeah i forgot to mention that in my own comment but i love ghosts as an addition to the SRS base.
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Things that confused me at first, and some that still confuse me after 446 days of using bunpro:
Cram: I’ve never used cram once because I just don’t really get it. For example, I’d love to just be able to automatically cram the current ghosts that I’m working through in my reviews, but even though I have 50+ ghosts right now, there are only 3 grammar points under “troubled grammar”, indicating that they’re not the same. And writing down my 50+ ghosts and trying to find them in the 500+ grammar points from N5-N3 is way too much work. Maybe I just don’t get cram, but that’s why I still haven’t used it.
Negative reviews: This one is really minor, but sometimes I start reviewing for the day and it tells me there are like 30 reviews, but then I’m done with 30 and it keeps going, the counter going into -1, -2…, probably because some grammar points came up for review while I was reviewing. Always confuses me.
Coloring in the stats: “…per day” shows how much you’ve reviewed and how many new grammar points you’ve studied for the day going from dark red to yellowish. For me, red instinctively looks like a warning. “You didn’t really study enough new grammar points today.” But yellow stands for 8+ new grammar points and I’d like to see the person who can reliably study 8+ new grammar points from N2 and even N3 forward without kind of knowing them already and being on vacation, thus having all day to study. With N5 and N4 it might be kind of possible, but after that, especially with ghosts enabled, reviews would be unmanageable.
Vocabulary: If you read through Tae Kim’s grammar guide, 90%+ of the time he uses very VERY basic vocabulary, even for the few obscure N2 & N1 grammar points in the end, which I think is a good idea, because the point is to learn the grammar. Bunpro on the other hand uses more advanced vocabulary, which might be fitting for the JLPT level, but when one doesn’t already have a grasp of N3 vocab before starting N3 grammar, that person will end up having to look up a ton of unknown words which really, REALLY, stands in the way of just getting the concept of the grammar point. People who don’t follow the JLPT levels and use the Tae Kim or Tobira path, will often have grammar that’s using vocab way above their level. I have almost 50 N2 grammar points from working through Tobira and while the grammar itself wasn’t difficult most of the time, the vocab used in Bunpro sure tripped me up. Sure it might be nice for some people to learn some new vocab on the side, but it always confuses me to see new vocab and complex multi line sentences for one simple grammar point. I’d love to hear the reason for this.
Ghosts: Ghosts were really confusing in the beginning and I had to look through the forum to see what they are, how they work and what they do. I’ve had them turned off for the most part, because especially while studying new grammar, the reviews become unmanageable for me quickly. Even now, while my daily reviews are like 85-90% correct, that means of course that I’m getting new ghosts…and they’re just increasing, making me feel bad about my performance, even though I don’t think 85-90% is actually bad. So I’m inclined to turn ghosts off or to minimal again, because it seems I need 95+% of correct reviews for the ghosts to stay manageable and at that point I kind of don’t need the reinforcement anymore.
SRS12: For the longest time I’ve wondered how to get my grammar to SRS12, with no explanation on how that works. I think it took over a year for the first grammar points to appear there. I thought I was doing something wrong with 400+ grammar points sitting at SRS11 and 0 at SRS12, because I couldn’t see the required intervals anywhere. And I’m still not exactly sure what happens at SRS12.
Grammar explanations: The grammar explanations are often really bare bones for a website that is about grammar. I do have the yellow/blue/red grammar dictionaries here so I can look up 90%+ of the grammar points for a detailed explanation, but a user shouldn’t have to rely on external sources on a premium website. I understand you’re working on implementing detailed grammar explanations starting with N5 grammar, which is great. I hope you reach N2/N1 before I’m done with the current content though.
Value:
For me it comes down to having a grammar SRS that works. Having tried, and failed, to study grammar using Anki before, bunpro is just an amazing tool and that’s why I’ve been using it for over a year without taking a break for a single day.
This might seem like a wall of complaints vs one positive, but they are really just minor things compared to the one big plus that bunpro offers.
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See me after class for I am the cram-meister general
Here’s a post I made revealing that cram is in fact the surefire way to ghostbust
I use cram frequently:
- Learn new grammar point? Drill it immediately, bookmark, cram it, CRAM IT DOWN YOUR FACE UNTIL YOU CAN’T FORGET IT, or do as I do and forget it on the second review, and then ghost bust it
- Confusing set of grammar points: Can’t tell the difference between like, like, seems and like? CRAM THOSE GRAMMAR POINTS until you can tell your yo-knee from yo-nah, your me-tie from your sue-da
- Sitting in a waiting room for your covid jab, roll the dice, select all the grammar points you’ve learned and then feel the crushing weight of despair as you proceed to get 40% right. Makes everything seem less bad.
yeah, the coffee is strong this morning, I’ll be fine soon.
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Thanks for the advice, cram-meister general jamesrender. I’ll put it to good use and may I finally cram my way to the top!
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Is there a full blown tutorial explaining the cram and ghost functions?
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I’ve never used the cram either and I also struggle to find the difference between troubled grammar and ghosts.
Also what was extremely confusing is that PayPal payment option is not automatically linked to your account and you have to contact with someone at the team. So maybe a better integration is needed.
Other than that, what was mentioned, it’s a bit weird that the site doesn’t really suggest or gives any hints/guidelines in the pace you should follow, not forcing, but recommending.
Then there’s the beta features. For the longest time the grammar point progression I though it was not a beta feature but a permanent one. So I’d clearly mark what features are in beta, as that would probably make you pay more attention to see if it’s working properly, and provide feedback respectively.
Maybe something else will come to mind, but that’s from the top of my head for now.
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In general I didn’t find using BunPro too confusing back in the day. Sure, I had to look up / try what the cram feature was and the like, but it was generally A-okay. The one thing I missed and still believe could be a useful feature is an (optional!) time-gated pathway that let’s you add x grammar points per day / time interval (2 - 3 per day seems reasonable, unless some grouping like Lesson 1 Part 1/3 is something you would consider) max as figuring out when / how many grammar points to add was, at least for me, the biggest barrier in starting to use BunPro full time. A short “introduction” of the sitethat comes with a few helpful informational pop-ups in the beginning would be useful too I think, stuff like :
- How to select your JLPT level of items (and why it would be a good idea to still start at N5 to fill in any gaps in your knowledge)
- A general explanation of what an SRS system is. (I suspect most users would at least be familiar with either WK, Anki, Torii or on of many others, but who knows
) - Upon getting your first ghosts, how the cram feature works
- How to add your own sentences
- (In case you’d implement my guided path suggestion) A reminder after both one day and a week that you can always get off the beaten path and enjoy the freedom that makes BunPro so wonderful, but that people who prefer the cozy security can just follow along this guided path.
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-
Ghost Reviews
I didn’t understood what they are and what is their purpose for some time. I found some explanations deep in a forum post, but I am still not sure of the real interest of the ghost reviews.
I would have appreciated some popup : “Hey! congrats you got your first ghost review ! Do you want to know more about ghosts reviews and how they work ? <Yes/No>” -
The Path
I was confused at first by the path to choose : I was just begining my learning so I had no grammar book or other knowledge. Is there a better one ? so it implies there are less good ones ? What it implies to switch from one path to another ? I decided back then to stick with the bunpro order as I do not use any textbook.
I have not much time each day to spend on learning Japanese, and couldn’t take classical courses. I was using wanikani when I discovered Bunpro, so I was already familliar with SRS.
Basicaly I was looking for a site that tells me what to do and in which order to study things, and makes me review it when it is time. Bunpro is really good for this.
Note: I just discovered that the cram feature can be used to ghostbust ! I will have to look into it.
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If you click the ‘faq’ link on the home page, it connects to this thread:
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Thank you so much for the feedback so far! I’m taking this into account, each and every comment.
If there’s any more stuff you guys would like to point out, keep it coming!!
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Today I completed 1 month in bunpro. I finished N5 and did 21 grammar points in N4. Already paid for one year today 
So for me it was the bunny mode, but since now I use anki mode with keys 1,2,3 to answer them, not a problem anymore. It wasn’t working btw idkw.
I would say the ghost too, I think it looks like the leeches in WK. by default it is set to on, but I read someone here saying that it should be changed to a hardcore mode for these ghosts, I couldnt find it. So, just normal on mode.
Also people saying grammar points and lessons, bunpro recommends 3 grammar points a day, I dont know if this is one lesson only or 3 lessons.
Honestly I am kinda addicted to bunpro reviews. I wait them in anticipation more than WK reviews these last few weeks. So the method is working for me.
I finished shirimono from n5 to n2 but the website got a overhaul and got confusing at the point I had to quit, but even before that, I was doing them like a chore, it was very robotic, only one example sentence and I had memorized the answers.
With bunpro, I have to stop for a while and then I answer. That’s cool.
I wish it could use more diversified verbs, not only ‘study, clean, meet, buy’, for the example sentences. It sometimes look like genki II when I used it 11 years ago.
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how many reviews are you averaging a day? doing 147 points in one month is crazy hahaha especially if you have ghosts, hats off to ya though! also the vocab i can assure you gets A LOT more “intense” (for lack of a better word) later on!
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Hey! someone changed my title !
lol!
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Can I ask one thing, as it’s an impressive speed at which you are moving…
Are you reading the sentences along out loud and then putting in the answer, or are you looking at the hint and responding to that?
I was definitely doing the latter for a long time, and whilst it helps you motor through BP, since I switched to the doing the former, my reading ability and retention has improved.
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My first attempt at Bunpro was when it only had N5 and possibly N4, so quite some time ago. I think lack of info/support was an issue back then but obviously that doesn’t apply now, since there are a ton of example sentences, readings, help on the forums etc.
I think the self-directedness of it was an issue too when I came back to it. I’d gotten used to WK holding my hand, so it took a while to work out the balance.
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They probably have like 100-150 reviews on average.
Atleast I added 140 N2 Grammar points throughout november and had around that many reviews on average. You might have seen my stupidly high review amount in the Race
I am having 45 reviews a day. So far very simple because N5 and N4 for me are easy,
I used genki II 11 years ago, so even the sentences are similar. That’s why I pointed out about the same use of verbs.
I know from N3 and specially N2 on are quite a nightmare (when I used shirimono at least) because they are too similar to each other those grammar points and usually we dont see them in manga in a regular basis or news article and twitter, they are very specific IMO.
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