For you, what was the most confusing part of Bunpro as a new user?

Bunpro
#44

As many said before what has been confusing at first is the way Bunpro works and should be used. How ghosts are introduced/exorcised, when reviews are available (this strange unlocking every half an hour…), how many reviews are left (negative number of reviews!?) are among the most confusing features IMHO.

Since I had a few years of (slowly) studying Japanese I started by learning N3 grammar points and not having a proper comparison of the nuances between similar points confused me a lot. One may say this is acquired by exposure, but I am of the kind that likes/requires plain explanation, and sudying similar grammar points in a row may be of help for me (bad memory => need to have the same things side by side).

As an SRS it forces me to review grammar points frequently which is what I needed as a not very consistent worker. Also the explanation are very concentrated and up to the (grammar) point which helps get the gist. For more detailed explanation the resources is also a great feature I use for difficult grammar points (but the several levels of details in explanation you guys are implementing currently seems very promising :clap:).

And also the very friendly community is a plus. While the community is not very large (which I like) it is still very active and people have various interests, hobbies and experience with Japanese. :heart:

6 Likes
#45

Yeah. I work full time. I can spend like 30 minutes max a day, but not every day, on study. So I have all these SRSs set up to help with that. (Wk, torii, and bunpro).

It has really helped to keep the lowest review level at or under 50 items. A lot of the time I just have 25.

Since I am time poor, I subscribe to slow and steady. Plus’s all the SRSs help me fill time during lunch breaks or after work when waiting for dinner.

Keep at it😊

2 Likes
#46

I feel your pain (it is same for me)…

1 Like
#47

I still have no idea how the correct percentages at the end of review sessions are calculated

3 Likes
#48

I was (and tbh still am) confused why there’s a lot of duplicate grammar points (this may just be an oversight), and also why a lot of affirmative/negative form of the same grammar point (i.e. はず・はずがない、べき・べきではない) are separate. I feel like anywhere they can consolidate things, even only the occasional one, is a small step in the right direction. The sheer number of grammar points on the site is both a great thing, but also an extremely daunting thing. Anyone starting with Bunpro with little to no Japanese and just using the Bunpro order is bound to be extremely overwhelmed.

That said, it is an amazing supplemental tool. I personally think the best way to use Bunpro is to pick a textbook and add those same grammar points as you study them. THEN, after you get through most of the grammar points at a certain JLPT level, go back and do the ones you missed. It worked (and is still working) for me and I can definitely notice my Japanese getting better.

2 Likes
#49

What confused me (and still does):

  • The introduction to new grammar when you first sign up shows you the grammar and an example sentence all at once on a nice page, but then after that initial study session, there is no way to get it back. I miss having an example sentence right there when I go to study a new batch of grammar. Is this still possible to see, or is it only for people who are just starting out?

  • When I click on a grammar item from the “content” view, in the upper left corner of the grammar page it shows, for example, “N2 lesson 2: 21/23”. What is that? Is that something I should be able to feel or see when I learn new grammar? I’ve just been plucking away at my 3-new-grammar-point batches, unaware of there being any sort of order to the madness. Am I supposed to be able to refer to these “lessons” later? Are they divided by theme? Why do they exist?

  • Edit to add: apparently you can study vocabulary here? How? If I google it, nothing comes up, and I can’t find any “study new vocabulary” options in the settings or anywhere else. I just clicked the button to add WaniKani vocabulary to my account? I have no idea what that did, but now I have a vocabulary review button on my home page :open_mouth:

What I like:

  • All of the grammar for N5-N1 is consolidated in one place, and I can look up things I forgot easily and add them to my review pile. Plus, the book my tutor likes to use (the “Try!” series) doesn’t even have all the grammar points that Bunpro does, so it motivates me to keep going so I can see more than I would normally see in my in-person lessons.

  • I can control what I want to study and when I want to study it. I can add things to my review pile, remove them, or mark them as known at my own will. It truly feels like a personalized experience that I can cater to my individual needs.

1 Like
#50

The most confusing part was to know how many lessons I should learn at once, I would prefer something like wanikani that tells you how many new lessons can you learn. Now I understand that this is not possible in bunpro, but it should be a method to have something similar, for example avoiding to have more than X elements in SRS 0-2 levels (differentiating each deck).

I had a friend that started to use bunpro a week ago, and in the first day he has 50 lessons learned because there was nothing to tell him when to stop, he was about to abandon bunpro for that reason, I tell him some tips and restarted his progress.

Now what I do is one grammar lesson and 7 vocabulary words each day, it works perfect for me. In four months approx I will have N4 completed.

In conclusion, some guidance for new users of how to learn lessons without being overwhelmed would be essential.

3 Likes
#51

For me the problem was the plain form. I didn’t come across the plain form in my Japanese studies before I started bunpro. ( I am doing a once a week evening class, using the text book Japanese for Busy People- which is not covered by Bunpro) I could not get my head round the plain forms- since we were only using polite forms in my class. Also conjugation generally- it would be good to have a way of drilling verbs in bunpro.
I kept with it because I like to refresh my knowledge of grammer forms I have learned- and this I have found is the best way.

1 Like
#52

I struggled to know where to start.
I also use wanikani and I found it much easier to just get straight into it.
When you are tight for study time, the last thing you want to do is burn hours learning a new tool.
I tried Bunpro for about a week and then gave up. Fortunately, I bought a years subscription, so after I finished Genki, and wanted to do more grammar study, I decided to come back and give it a go. Am glad I did.
A little more hand holding at the start would help a lot.

1 Like
#53

Hello,

I love Bunpro, it has so much potential, but there are little things I don’t get. For example, the SRS intervals in this screenshot:

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What does SRS 12 mean? 12 months? weeks? I tried to look for some info in the documentation but I didn’t find anything. I imagine it is something about the SRS interval but I find confusing, for example, how a grammar concept can pass to SRS 3-5 to SRS 6-8.

Also, another thing that I find confusing are the ghosts reviews. The only documentation I found it is a post from 2018, so I don’t know if it is still valid or not; but I don’t get how many time you have to answer correctly before slaying a ghost.

In any case, it is not a big deal, if someone has an explanation I am happy to listen!

3 Likes
#54

I just started. Would be nice to have a description on how/when stuff moves across SRS categories, including what ghosts are and how to reduce their number.

3 Likes
#55

I started using Bunpro when it was (I think?) in beta, then forgot about it for years and recently came back. Really like how the site has improved and how much content has been added, and I’m currently using it every day. However, there are some things that still confuse me - note that I am easily confused and need everything spelled out for me, so take this with a grain of salt :sweat_smile::

  • SRS levels and how items move between them, as the above posters stated

  • I initially thought that it was only possible to study textbook-related paths since the JLPT levels aren’t listed under the dropdown menu. I’m still not sure whether starting at JLPT N5 is the default path when people don’t pick another one or whether I “accidentally” chose this route by clicking around on the website.

  • Sometimes the items seem to lack the information what exactly they… want from me, and it’s not really clear from the context or translation, either. I type in an answer, and only then I’m notified that I was supposed to enter the past negative form or something like that. I tried to change the “Review English” setting thinking the amount of information was in ascending order and “Always show nuance” would be the most detailed one, but now I didn’t get any hints at all for most reviews. Maybe “More” would be the right choice? A short explanation or example what those settings do and how reviews look with them would be really useful.

1 Like
#56

Firstly, thank you for this. I found it by searching for “Grammar SRS” in WaniKani forms.

My issues with bunpro, and they may well be my fault but…

  1. It’s not clear to me what the happy path is to use the app. There are so many paths, buttons, popups, links, tabs… I would really appreciate if someone could make a video on “Here is how you use bunpro” that will not involved clicking on all the buttons unless that’s part of it. If it IS part of it, then it’s a bit overwhelming for me.

  2. App feels stale (not updated). Examples: “We’re hiring” link, you’re actually not at the moment. “What’s new”, last update was in January. News? 7 months old as well. Why is this an issue? If I buy lifetime subscription, will you be around next year?

  3. Lots of things require that I look up in the FAQ. What are ghosts? (leeches, why not call them that?) Not sure about the value of XP or level. In Wanikani I’m at a level less than 60, the max, I can understand that.

  4. The app appears cluttered meaning there are too many things on the screen. This comment is probably also related to my first point.

Anyhoo, when I discovered this site I felt a sign of relief. Please keep shipping :rocket: and it’s okay to remove things.

1 Like
#57

For your app troubles, it might be that you’re using the old app which is no longer updated afaik.
They’re working on a new one right now, it’s in alpha but it’s working pretty well

1 Like
#58

The ‘Review English’ setting. The option names are misleading, inconsistent in what they do, and not ordered in any meaningful way. There’s still no consensus on which setting is best for learning. Too little English and you have no clue what to put in, too much English and you don’t even need to read the rest of the sentence in most instances to get the answer correct. It would be nice if this was researched so that some default could be applied to everyone, streamlining the platform. Especially when it takes over a year (much over a year in fact) to ‘burn’ an item if you never get it wrong and always do it the day due. The global statistics, ect mean nothing to me when everyone is using a very different tool

2 Likes
#59

I didn’t like Bunpro when it first came out, but I came back to it about 3-4 months ago, about a year and a half since I hit lv60 on Wanikani. I’ve been reading 小説 and transferred my FFXIV character to a Japanese server. Bunpro is a fantastic companion along with Anki to really solidify fluency. I’ve gone from basic fluency to intermediate in reading (and seriously improved listening skills thanks to every sentence having dialogue!). The most striking thing for me is how fast I can read now versus a few months ago. I am not a particularly quick reader, as even in English, I tend to read novels at conversation pace, but now it’s really not even close as to what it used to be.

That said, ウリエンジェ still makes no sense in English or Japanese lol. I feel like I have to watch the 侍 channel on my JP TV box 24/7 to learn his olde way of speaking.

3 Likes
#60

For me, it was the path I chose. I’m studying using Minna no Nihongo, so when I came to bunpro I thought “I’m going to follow this path”, but the way the descriptions and reviews are structured is thinking about someone who follows the path suggested by bunpro.

But what has this confused me?
As Minna no Nihongo doesn’t bring casual forms or verbs in the base form right away, for example, it was a little complicated to see a たべる turn into a たべて, to miss the simple review because it wasn’t “学生です” but “学生だ”.

How can I reverse this situation? In my case I left bunpro as the initial element for grammar and followed the path drawn by the portal, it took a while to go through the gaps, and I just finished the N5, not all the points closed together with the path of the book (there are some items which are classified as N4 and N3), but I see that this abortion was worth it for me.

3 Likes
#61

Wowww, 2 years later and this helped me so much. I was google searching “should I memorize the words introduced by Bunpro?” because I was so confused about how I was supposed to know the words they were introducing, I thought it was just a grammar app.

Your post made me realize that the word I’m conjugating is literally written right next to the blank space and there’s an arrow. I wish they had like a “hey, this is a new question format, here’s how to do it!” rather than just showing an arrow and expecting me to get it.

Edit: Nvm I just realized some of the questions really do expect you to just have the word memorized, it’s kind of a bad experience, I’m not here to learn new words that’s what anki and WK are for, I wish it just showed me the word above the sentence and I can figure out the conjugation from there.

3 Likes
#62

Hi Ayeblinken, welcome to the forums!

I’m glad my post helped a little, though I think I could clarify the issue a little further.
The only thing you should have to memorise is the actual grammar point (of course), and any word that needs to be added into the sentence and modified by the grammar point should be written at the end in brackets.
The rules for how to modify the work in brackets will be part of the grammar explanation, and part so part of the ‘test’ for each review.

For example,
down below is a review for the grammar point ばいい (can・should, it’d be good if). This grammar point is conjugated to a word in a certain way (it can’t be used in isolation). The sentence is asking how to say ‘would be better to go’, and the word you are using is on the side (行く・いく: to go).

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Does that clear up the issue?

1 Like
#63

Ahhh, thank you, this does help a lot. I realize now I was mixing up some of the grammar points thinking they were actually vocab. Below for instance, I thought that “shi” was “to play” and “masu” was the polite conjugation and was frustrated because I never learned the word “to play” and yet I was being asked to conjugate it without a reference. I realize now that shimasu is the polite version of the grammar point and “to play” is just one of the possible meanings.

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