Have you done your BunPro Review today?

Omun · February 6, 2019, 1:37pm

Finally got round to buying my sub after the trial ran out!

Today I took the time to zero out my reviews, even though quite some things ended up in the ghost pile. That’s okay.

I’m going through CureDolly’s “Japanese from scratch” playlist from the start again, and I’m adding links to the BunPro notes of the relevant section. Not a link to the overall video, but the exact time stamp where she talks about that grammar item, so I don’t have to look for anything when I just want to hear her explanation again in the future.

It’s not as boring as I feared, rewatching the grammar videos I already saw. It’s kind of nice to be refreshing things after becoming more familiar with the grammar points for a while.

Currently, I plan not to add new BunPro lessons right away. First I’ll focus on making sure I feel comfortable with the grammar already in my queue.

Haven’t done any reading yet today, but I hope to still get that done. My wife will be out most of the evening to take the final tests in her Dutch language course. I’ll be working hard on my Japanese as a sign of solidarity.

skullclutter · February 6, 2019, 3:14pm

Did my reviews yesterday and today, and added Causative form today. Only 6 more grammar points until I finish Genki 2!

Kai · February 6, 2019, 10:47pm

Producing the causative/passive verb forms naturally takes quite a lot of getting used to in my experience. If you really want to get them on lock, I’d recommend drilling them here every so often: Steven Kraft’s Japanese Projects

If you reach a point where you can produce them on the fly effortlessly, recognition (reading/listening) should become second nature

Kai · February 6, 2019, 10:58pm

Do you have any examples to post here? Because I’m inclined to agree with what you’re saying.

Jul3 · February 7, 2019, 12:08am

In the first couple of Bunpro examples were:

Which, looking at it now becomes clear to me that it’s saying “doing dance is fun” in particular over just “dance is fun” which could mean , say “watching dance is fun” which might be ダンスを見ることは楽しい…

Similarly “I like sports” which could mean “I like playing sports” which the example says, rather than “I like supporting sports” which might be スポーツの応援しますことが好き, where I’d need to see whether you can even use します instead of する in this case (I’m guessing not…), and why you would use こと rather than のが (which an article Bunpro linked is about…)

Looking at my screenshot, I still have no idea what こと does in the 3rd example. Sorry, maybe I should have posted in the thread for the specific grammar point to ask, instead of this general thread >_<

Kai · February 7, 2019, 12:53am

You’re exactly right about the first two sentences

スポーツが好き could mean you like watching sports, talking about sports, etc. To say that you like playing them though, you’d need to add する, but 好き only connects to nouns. So, we get スポーツをすることが好き。

The 3rd one I’m a little bit surprised to see as a review for the nominalizing grammar point, but it’s perfectly valid. A sentence that is nothing but「[Phrase] + こと。」carries a strong sense of authority, along the lines of “This will be done.” or “This will not be done.” You’re probably most likely to see it on signs that are posting rules:

走らないこと。
No running.

タバコを吸わないこと。
No smoking tobacco.

Right again; generally speaking, always keep everything in the plain form until the end of the sentence. The only exception I can even think of off the top of my head is saying ですが mid-sentence instead of だが when being polite.

Gqad · February 7, 2019, 1:59am

Just leveled up on BP!

I’ve been taking a leisurely stroll through WK recently and I haven’t added anymore BP points recently because I realized I really need to work on conjugation before I move forward. I’m much worse at it than I thought I’ll be spending quality time with Tae Kim until I’m more confident.

On an unrelated note, I just got tapioca pearls in the mail to make Boba tea at home and am pumped to try!

jamie · February 7, 2019, 4:23am

Done WK, KW, KS and BP this morning. Got 30 new lessons so I’ll do them all today since my apprentices are low. Really low reviews on BP, so I’ll add new lessons.

I always surprised how Japanese mix casual and polite form in one sentence like it’s nothing Making my head hurts

Why both みたいに and みたいな is the correct answer?

MissDagger · February 7, 2019, 12:23pm

BP and WK reviews. 4 vocab plus 1 kanji lesson at WK, and two grammar points at BP.

Omun · February 7, 2019, 3:36pm

Way too late, and I’ve done far too little Japanese stuff today, but got zero everything on both BunPro and WK. Still haven’t added any new grammar lessons, but that’s fine, given how shamefully poorly I’m doing on some of these reviews.

I’ll have to go over my weak points more closely for a bit, and then I’ll hopefully be able to get trucking along properly again!

Have a nice day, everyone~ Happy studying!

Jul3 · February 7, 2019, 5:02pm

Thanks very much for your help! It was useful. Bunpro had a couple other examples similar to the 3rd one there for こと.

I tried to do some more reading about こと since it seems an important grammar point. https://jlptbootcamp.com/2011/02/jlpt-n4-grammar-battle-of-the-nominalizers-no-and-koto-2-of-2/ was ueful. As far as I gather, it seems like you take the entire sentence that comes before こと as a whole, and then apply the 2nd half of the sentence to that whole thing. The 2nd point explained why the BP examples always had こと before です

I made it slowly through all the other examples for こと on Bunpro, and think I understood the sentences, but don’t think I’ve really grasped when こと is used. I’m going to leave it for today and hope to come across is more in reading etc and see how it is used there.

Jul3 · February 7, 2019, 11:09pm

Before the battle through こと, I added the other 2 points in my BP study queue, the last ones of Lesson 1 of N4, which were a lot simpler to comprehend. I accidentally levelled up to Level 12 on WK yesterday, with about 35 vocab lessons yet to go… I’ve been working through some of the vocab, and think I eventually hit the ones which were alternate readings/longer strings of kanji of the Level 10 kanji. Hope to finish off the Level 11 vocab soon.

In other news, I got a notification that my graded readers arrived at work, but I caught a cold so am at home today. They arrived a day early! I’m really looking forward to getting them to start reading at the weekend, so will try to go to work tomorrow anyway to pick them up >_< (I always get Amazon JP stuff delivered to work as they need signing for, and they arrived a day early!)

Was reading the naze doushite book, and saw an interesting discussion for a grammar point I didn’t know, only to see it’s right at the end of the BP N4 grammar … I also saw こと being used a lot in the bits I read as well, but didn’t really grasp why, I just basically think I ignore こと whenever it comes up, as I don’t think it really means anything, just is needed to make a grammatically correct sentence.

Kai · February 7, 2019, 11:36pm

Re: こと

Think of it this way:

I like run.
I like play.

That doesn’t work in English, because we need to nominalize them to make grammatical sense:

I like to run.
I like to play.

or…

I like running.
I like playing.

But what’s the difference between “I like to run” and “I like running?” I don’t even know, but it doesn’t matter because we’re not studying English here

My point though, is that [Verb]こと・[Verb]の are relatable to English in this sense. Sometimes they’re interchangeable (possibly with differing nuances), and sometimes only one or the other is valid.

An English example of this:
“I like to run” and “I like running” are probably perfectly interchangeable, but if you were to define 走る as “running” instead of as “to run,” people might look at you like you’re an alien.

jamie · February 8, 2019, 1:52am

Done WK and BP today. 7 mistakes on WK since I added too much lesson yesterday. I forgot many of them

Had another mistake on casual volitional form ようとおもう
Found out that なら can also mean as for

Couldn’t find casual volitional form on dictionary, I’ll read the references tonight. No new lessons today, still confused with many new grammars I’ve studied.

Omun · February 8, 2019, 8:17am

I had only a few reviews for BunPro today, but got them squared away after the daily WK morning review pile. Made it to level 16 on BP yesterday, and should be 32 on WK tomorrow.

After breakfast, I plan to sit down for some good grammar study time with CureDolly videos. I’ll be making it up to the point that I left the video series last time, so time again for copious note taking! I may or may not add new BunPro lessons as well.

On a semi-related note: grammar is evil! D:<

My dumb brain was clearly trying to parse and square away all the grammar revisions I’ve been doing the past three days. This resulted in me being awake at 04:00 while my mind obsessively tried to compile a sentence using some BunPro grammar points.

I would have preferred to sleep more, but sure, brain. Let’s do that instead. >_>

MissDagger · February 8, 2019, 10:17am

Reviews at BP and WK. Also added two lessons here on BP. My leveling on WK is so slow now because I focus some on BP. Since I got more serious about BP my leveling have slowed to over 14 days per level.

But, when I finished N5. I want to focus on reviewing and a bit of cramming on BP. And add in reading. Plus I want to start doing iTalki lessons once a week. And start Torii for the missing N5 vocab I need.

Basically my goal right now is to have solid knowledge of N5 by the time I go to Japan and Japanese language school early April.

I probably need writing practice too. Aaaah…

Jul3 · February 8, 2019, 6:00pm

Thanks for the tips on こと. I get that usage of it now, as, when trying to compose sentences, going straight from the verb feels wrong and adding the こと fills the gap and makes the sentence complete. I think the other usages of it might need more work, but for now I’m okay. And the stage after will be to become familiar with when to use の and when to use こと.

As for other things, In Bunpro, I suddenly got confused when a review for てください came up, but I thought it was asking for なさい since that it one of my more recent grammar points I’ve been getting lots of review for.

I added a few more items, てみる、てほしい、にくい. てみる is amusing, because I remember a while ago seeing it in sentences and thinking it was 見る and wondering why the sentence didn’t make sense, and then learning about てみる. So it’s good to have it on bunpro with lots of examples, with the different conjugations of it as well, which will be good to understand.

Over on WK, I added the last 10 vocab of level 11, then added the level 12 radicals, and the first 5 kanji.

Realised I need more practice at making sentences to learn usage of new grammar points, so since the daily sentence thread here kinda died, I started making a load just for myself. I should probably do this more often, and make up a lot, to get a better feel for the grammar points, and how to construct longer sentences in general.

skullclutter · February 8, 2019, 9:30pm

Thanks for the link! There’s no such thing as too much conjugation practice.

Got my Bunpro, Anki and KKLC done today, and added the last three grammar points from Genki, Chapter 22. Just one chapter to go! I’m super excited to start working native materials into my study.

jamie · February 9, 2019, 12:46pm

Going to level up WK soon, however I still have many vocabulary words that are hard to remember, I’ll use self study more often. It looks like I added too much vocabulary words to remember a day from both WK and iKnow

Mistakes on BP: てくる、がする、and the old annoying casual volitional form
I’ve added 3 new lessons, since lower streak are empty. I won’t add another one tomorrow since my reviews are gradually increasing again.

Omun · February 9, 2019, 3:58pm

Been keeping up with my Japanese reviews today, but that’s about it. Doubt I’ll be doing much grammar this weekend, so it’s review maintenance until fresh back into everything on Monday.

Enjoy your weekend, all!