Grammar Sentences forcing failing SRS by asking for unlearned english translations

I wish I screenshoted the sentence when it appeared in my reviews. I think when I tried っこない the hint was a bit vague, like “try something else” but I’m not 100% sure.

On the other hand, I’d like to add something positive as well. Overall the hints/shakes are very helpful and in most sentences I’m steered into the right direction (more/less formal, more modern, more archaic, etc.) so I really appreciate your efforts and I enjoy using Bunpro a lot! :blush:

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I’m glad you’re finding the hints useful! :grin:

The ‘shake’ hints predate the Tense hints, so many of them will be less clear than the tense hints themselves. It’s something we may be looking at adjusting in the future as well.

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New one I’ve run into of the original topic issue. There’s just no chance to link this together with the only context being ‘Literary’ and ‘took the opportunity’

The issues mentioned here are the reasons I moved to the only show Japanese and then reveal and self-grade style reviews. There are too many different ways to say the same thing that at higher levels, the fill-in style really doesn’t make sense anymore. Also, I would say that reading the sentence/vocab only in Japanese and then checking your answer also promotes the “Japanese first” thought process, which like Keaka said, is extremely important for actually understanding the language instead of having the extra translation step involved. Especially important when you don’t have time to think and have to understand in realtime (conversations, etc)

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As previously mentioned, all grammar sentences are being looked at, and any that need changing to match the English in the header will be adjusted. This will take time, but it is being done. They are also being approached in a specific order, to avoid missing any. So moving forward, you don’t need to post any others you find, as it won’t change the order in which they’re adjsuted. :call_me_hand:

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I’ve decided to unsub and discontinue Bunpro.

I had a couple of weeks break and spent time on other resources, and came back recently to have another go at Bunpro, and I’m getting more than 50% of the answers wrong in my reviews due to ambiguity, things being used in a different context from how they were taught, or where there are multiple potentially correct answers.

Due to these, and other issues I highlighted in some of my other posts, it’s unbelievebly frustrating, demotiving and inefficient for me, and simply not an enjoyable way to learn.

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Hey sorry to be bringing this up again but how’s the progress on this coming along?

I’ve now completed all of N1 even and I’m still running into the same issues in reviews that makes me constantly fail certain ones because the English leads me astray.

Another example that I’ve noticed I’ve failed at least 10x on this specific sentence (Not the grammar point as a whole) as the english used is completely different to the rest of the example sentences.


(Instead of using Hard to, Difficult to, this grammar sentence instead just says “wouldn’t”)

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I would like to highly recommend you to first look at the hints during your reviews, and only check the English translation if the meaning of the overall sentence feels unclear to you. As it’s been mentioned several times in this thread already, associating a grammar point with very specific English translations will lead you to using unnatural Japanese down the line; this includes the screenshots that you posted of you getting a question wrong for inserting a similar grammar point, which in reality was either flat out wrong or very unnatural in terms of the Japanese used because you relied solely on the English translation to answer the question. At the higher levels you must learn to figure out what fits or doesn’t fit, what sounds natural or doesn’t sound natural, by just looking at the given Japanese sentence. After all, you’re not gonna have an English translation provided to you on the JLPT, or when you’re outputting with your Japanese IRL. It may be challenging to change your approach right away, especially if you haven’t been immersing in natural Japanese content all that much, but you’ll definitely make significant gains in your understanding of Japanese once you stop associating it with English.

I do agree that some of the sentences need to have their translation improved (like the one for 代えがたい) , but in general: parsing Japanese as Japanese and not its English translation will take you to much greater heights as a language learner than you would reach without it.

Sorry if my response sounded too blunt. I’m only speaking based on my experience of having used bunpro for the last two years and passing the N1 last December from having applied this approach to my learning. Hope this helps. Feel free to respond if you have any questions!

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Your recommended use is not the default setup of bunpro.
Immediately needing an additional full sentence definition of a grammar point because the provided sentence translation is unclear is an obvious indication that the translation itself should be adjusted.

Anyone that starts using bunpro is going to have the same experience as what I’ve listed here. A user above who even provided 3 different examples along with a writeup quit bunpro with the issue I raised being part of the problem.

There is no benefit in going to https://www.thesaurus.com/ and playing darts with what english translation will be used in reviews when only specific translations have been taught during lessons.

Reviews are reviews. They are not lessons.

I’m happy you agree these sentences need their English translations updating.

You can change the setup to display the hints first and the translation last; that way you prioritize a Japanese-first methodology and only check the translations as a fallback when you’re having difficulty grasping the meaning of the sentence itself, rather than relying on it to guess what grammar point the question is looking for. This was also the original use-case that was intended for them. The hints aren’t there to act as definitions; rather, they help you distinguish the desired grammar point from other valid synonyms you may know of, which is what you seem to be relying on the translations for at the moment, and that’s exactly where I think the crux of the issue lies here.

I don’t mean to disagree with you regarding the misleading translations because there’s certainly some truth to it, but blaming those for failing your reviews is just barking up the wrong tree and indicates that you didn’t comprehend the full nuance of the grammar point when you first learned it. Japanese and English are inherently different languages. Consequently, rote memorization of English translations for Japanese expressions often falls short of conveying the full spectrum of their practical use. For a more comprehensive understanding, it is critical to delve beyond mere translations and grasp the intrinsic nuances of the expressions within their native context.

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Absolutely on board with your second paragraph. For how you get to that level though with what you wrote its common ground to say SRS reviews alone are simply not going to get you there, and having random (unnecessarily) ambiguous review sentences doesn’t benefit any learner.

Extra thing to note is that although you can change the display order like you said, this default order is what bunpro provides to all users and the large majority are going to run into the exact same issues as this thread with it.

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