新完全マスタ grammar?

Bunpro
#1

No complaining this time, just a question :grinning:

Just wanted to ask if you guys are planning to add the remaining grammar points frome this series of books and add them as paths.

There’s about half a dozen of grammar points still missing from 新完全マスタN2 book and about 15-20% missing from N1 book.

But you guys have both of these books as references for study materials in the grammar descriptions here on BP, which means you are clearly aware of their existence. So, I just wanted to confirm if it’s something in your future plans.

Cheers.

6 Likes
#2

I’ll second that. I was working though 新完全マスタ N3 while enrolled in a Japanese Language School and tried to add all grammar to Bunpro along the way. I often had the problem of finding the grammar points at all or gathering all the related grammar points on Bunpro, which correspond to one grammar explanation in 新完全マスタ.
So a dedicated path for those books would be nice, even though I understand that 新完全マスタ is seen more as resource to look up grammar instead of a learning resource such as Genki or Tobira.

3 Likes
#3

We will be continuing to add new grammar from several different sources (including 新完全). There will eventually be a point at which we arrive at though, where we may not add any more to N1, as it will just be too many. Once we reach that point, we may shuffle any additional points into an N0 type category.

As for the number where we will decide to ‘stop’ N1, while there are no immediate plans, I would say N3 is a pretty accurate depiction. Currently our N3 is around 220 points, which is a heck of a lot. I would hazard a guess that we would not want to push many of our N levels above that.

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#4

I don’t get the point. If these grammar points are considered Nx by an established ressource, they should be added to the level where they may appear in the official test, imho.

There is no such thing as too many grammar points in a level, at least that’s my opinion.

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#5

Especially considering that the test doesn’t have an official list and any of these grammar points has the chance to appear. What if you take the test and come across something that you could have already studied had it been in the correct section?

2 Likes
#6

This is true, and we are happy to do what the majority of users want, but looking at the book itself, it only has 157 grammar points for all of N1, which is already less than our N1 here on Bunpro.

If we continue to add grammar points for each level, according to whatever any source determines may show up, we will end up with potentially 3 to 400 points per said level. While this may not be an issue for some users, it is extremely demotivating for others. At some point in the future we may have to split each level into an ‘appears most often’, and ‘appears sometimes’ list toward the end, that people can choose to study if they want.

Something like this will require a lot of work on our part, as we’d have to scour as many years of test history as possible to get a ‘most common’ list for each level.

6 Likes
#7

I personally don’t care where the grammar point appears on bunpro (be it as part of N1, N2 or N0) as long as it does appear :grinning:

And I think @Asher is right, it’s better to put some more obscure grammar points as N0 to allow users to focus on more common and useful grammar points first.

As long as these more obscure grammar points DO appear somewhere on the site (such as this N0 level).

I plan to study everything anyway :grinning:

4 Likes
#8

I second the N0 section as a home for the obscurities of Japanese grammar.

6 Likes
#9

But what about for example づらい? It is only referenced in にくい | Japanese Grammar SRS with a notion of differenciation between these two points, but づらい is never introduced in a lesson (which is weird by itself).

It is for sure not a N0 grammar point. And at the same time, imagine if N4 was at 220+, it would add to an already crowded level.

#10

Sorry to pile on but will it actually be demotivating or is that just your opinion? Not to deride you, but as somebody that was also a web designer/developer a few years ago I noticed one of my primary issues was not doing X or Y on somebody’s site because I felt like it would negatively impact users for some reason even though I had no proof that would be the case.

We worked on a website for some sort of industrial tool manufacturer and due to the sheer quantity of stuff he was selling we, of course, had much of it paginated. He asked us to fix it and show more stuff on a single page which we thought was bad because it made the website look uglier and made usability weirder as well. But because he was paying us we made the change and, sure enough, it sounded like everyone using the site was much happier. I realized I was making a lot of assumptions about what users wanted/didn’t want because I was only looking at the problem through my own perspective and not theirs.

So, I guess when I read this it kind of seemed familiar. If N3, for example, jumps from 219 to 400 is that really going to be demotivating to people or do you just think it’s going to be demotivating to people? I’m also speaking as somebody that just jumped ship from Memrise because it became too focused on “fun usability traits” which had the opposite effect and just made studying anything seriously much more difficult.

6 Likes
#11

Disregarding for a moment how much extra work this would require, let me pitch a concept here:

I’m in favor of the “two parts to each level” categorization approach; it may even be good to allow grammar to be part of multiple N-level categories, as, from what I’ve heard, different sources will classify different grammar points as belonging to different N levels. If two sources contradict each other, no problem! Just say it belongs to all of them… but check this out:

Imagine you had a second bar next to the JLPT level progress bars:Untitled
This could, essentially, be “N# Bonus” and you can opt-in (in config maybe?) to take lessons in these categories before moving on to lessons in higher N levels. If sources say that a grammar item is N5, N4, and N3, all contradicting each other, you could take the most commonly agreed-upon level-- say, N4-- and put it in the “primary” lessons for that level, but also put it into the “Bonus” category for N5. When you do this lesson, it can just count towards progress in each category that it belongs to. So if you worked through all the content of the N5 Bonus, you’d see a little scatter of “taken” lessons in a few of the other N levels as well, and have a small head-start on some of those N-levels’ content.

7 Likes
#12

This is basically exactly what I had in mind when I mentioned splitting the levels into ‘appears most often’ vs ‘does not appear often’.

@whinette something like what @Silver_Skree showed here would eliminate the need for N0, as your example of づらい would go in the N4 ‘Plus’ level.

@Devenu I would say that it is definitely part opinion, everyone has a bias and it’s important to recognize our own. As mentioned, we would do our best organize the levels into ‘appears most’, vs ‘appears every now and again’. This would allow all users to choose the study path they like.

8 Likes
#13

I would actually find it MORE motivating if there were several hundred grammar points in N1. I think by the time someone makes it to that level they are looking for completeness rather than “usability”. Also the N1 test is exponentially harder than N2, so it only makes sense there should be a huge increase in grammar points between levels.

I wouldn’t be opposed to breaking it up into an N0 level, but I don’t really think it’s necessary. That could also be misleading for people studying for N1 if the N0 grammar points could still show up on the test.

5 Likes
#14

I prefer having a denser experience overall, Wanikani users sign up for 2 years and thousands of Kanji, why can it not be the same for grammar. N0 is a compromised approach, which in my mind could be functional equivalent to N1+.

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#15

Agreed, the main thing is I wouldn’t want the Bunpro team to limit content based on some arbitrary number of total grammar points. Whether it ends up as a huge N1 or an N0/N1+ level doesn’t make much difference. Either way, I don’t feel like the current N1 is complete. If you look at other N1 resources like 新完全マスタ or the Japan Times “Advanced Dictionary of Japanese Grammar”, there is a lot of grammar that Bunpro doesn’t cover yet.

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