How do you _Actually_ remember the vocab/grammar?

Bunpro
#1

How do people here actually memorise the vocab and grammar points? I don’t just mean “well it is an SRS, so you will eventually remember them”, but practically what do you do to get the grammar points into your head. I am getting about a 50% sucess rate on my recall, and I just can’t get a bunch of it to stick.

Do you write the conjugations out a hundred times like a Victorian school kid memorising their latin? Or do you just suck at memoriseing hundreds of grammar points until they finally sink in?

What do you do when you get a new grammar point? How long do you study the grammar page before moving on? 30 seconds? 10 minutes? If you get a grammar point wrong, do you just move onto the next question or do you spend 5-10 minutes trying to drill that grammar point somehow?

I feel like I am not really making any progress, and I have more ghosts than a haunted house at the moment. Am I just bad at remembering things? or is there some trick I haven’t realised?

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#2

Vocab : I started by katakana word like concert, tshirt etc. You don’t need to memorize the word most of the time as you already know it, but to memorize how it sounds in japanese.

I highly suggest not going blindly into adding a bunch of words, but actually thinking it through and adding them yourself
Then, I added cities (60 words) and “words with no translations” (udon, ramen, futon, tatami, kimono etc)

After that, i added words that were short (one or two kana) and easy (papa, mama, today, this week, this month, this year, etc)

You can already exclude a lot of words from the “unknown” category.

Grammar : As for grammar point, it depends what you’re looking at.

If i take points like “kore”, “sore”, “are”, i grouped them together to study.
Most of the grammar comprehension i have comes from watching videos.

Conjugation : Then, for conjugation bits, people tend to overcomplicate things.
I’ve once seen a book that separated godan into sub groups depending on the conjugation you were studying. Which was useless as godan you simply needed to learn your kana.

Most conjugations can be understood by starting with ichidan which always go : base + inflection (tabe + ru tabe + masu tabe + nai etc)
So you can focus on the inflection part.

Having clear tables help on that side
Like so :

Tabe + inflection

“Positive”
“Present/Future” “Past”
“Polite” “Past polite”
る た
ます ました

“Negative” (same cells but you put everything in negative)
ない なかった
ないです なかったです

(last line can be switched with ません ませんでした, it’s easier to remember just to add です, but keep in mind they’re more casual spoken japanese)

I’m getting carried away, the idea is simply to find a way for you to clearly understand, through videos, books, making your own material etc
Bunpro is a tool to review cards, SRS.
You need to have learned the point to remember it.
Not the opposite.

So if a point is stuck, remove it from your reviews, make a list, go learn about it, then try to review it again later.

5 Likes
#3

Hm… for me, the repetition does actually make it work. If there’s a grammar point that really doesn’t stick for me, sometimes I look up extra information about it off-site, or I manually create multiple ghosts for it so that it comes up incredibly frequently.

But considering you specifically mention conjugations, is it things like making the て-form/past/negative/formal and such that is currently causing you trouble? If that’s the case, there are some conjugation practice tools out there, though my personal experience is that simply coming across those conjugations in the wild is the best way to internalise them.

6 Likes
#4

Vocab? Mnemonics
着く - I’m too cool (つく) to arrive on time
忙しい - Ice (いs) Ogre (oが) (from Wanikani)

Grammar? Depends on the level.
Early

  • Have a master particle sentence for reference that includes に、で、を、が、は、と
  • Conjugate 食べる and 飲む (or 2 verbs of your choice, る and う verbs) anytime a verb or auxiliary verb is available and store them in a spreadsheet or word doc so you can line them up and see them together
  • If you don’t know the kanji or the sentences are more than 50% unknown words, you probably need more vocab

Middle

  • Revisit the base forms. に => にとって、を => を経て
  • Understand the synonyms, antonyms.

Late

  • Have an immersion example that lands it for you
  • Example: From Go Go Loser Rangers Anime - 「こんいちは！あるいは、こんばんは！」
3 Likes
#5

I learned kanji individually while I also learned words, so learning new vocab isn’t that difficult. Sometimes by knowing the meaning of the kanji, I can kind of “guess” what the word means and its pronunciation, this way I can remember them easily.
(A lot of people don’t recommend learning kanji like this and just learn words. I guess it depends on the person. It worked fine for me)

But there are moments where I encounter words that for some reason my brain just refuses to learn. In this case (and grammar) what has helped me A LOT is reading. I started reading when I was 2 years into studying (easy content was too boring) and my reading comprehension, speed, and retention has improved a lot. So my suggestion would be to immerse in whatever content you like.

Also if you are having too many ghosts or difficult time learning some words, you can stop adding newer ones. You don’t really need to add new things everyday. Sometimes its good to take a “break” from new content and just work on these to let them sit in your brain properly.

4 Likes
#6

one thing i do which i think is not recommended, is to turn on the undo function. if i miss something, then i see the correct answer. then i undo and type that answer in correctly. then i undo again and enter nothing to make sure it was registered as wrong. usually i also listen to the sentence.

in that way i get some practice typing out the right answer even if i got it wrong the first time. i don’t know if that really means i learning but it does seem to help me.

1 Like
#7

  1. Move the stuff you often get wrong to cram and instead of learning something new, spend the learning time on cramming those items until your success rate goes into an acceptable range (80-90%).

  2. You usually get an item wrong by providing a similar (close but not quite) word/pattern. Do some specific research on the differences between your wrong answer and the correct answer to understand the differences in nuance.

For example, I can google “souiu vs sonna ni” or “tariru vs jyuubun” and I get a good explanation on the differences and can understand why my seemingly correct answer actually doesn’t fit in the given card.

4 Likes
#8

In my experience with SRS systems, it takes me actually encountering vocab/grammar/kanji in the wild for it to stick. Also, I use several different learning resources and sometimes I need to encounter the term in several different resources for me to finally get it. The bottom line is to just practice a lot. For Bunpro grammar point specifically, you can use the Cram feature, and also read and listen to the example sentences.

7 Likes
#9

memory in SRS isolation: mnemonics, reviews
actual live-recall in conversation: from the moment I have to actually use it on

So many Expert 1 / Expert 2 items I couldn’t recall in convo, looked them up, felt stupid because I knew the word, and then it started sticking.

Actually using the words, or the grammar is the best strategy to me

3 Likes
#10

Interesting how we all learn differently.
I think at the beginning it generally helps to have a memory anchor. The most common being mnemonics. For each rule/vocab, I translate the sounds into a silly or common situation/word in a language I know.
When I get it wrong, I do not move forward until I have come up with a convincing mnemonic trick.
With time, the intermediate step of recalling via mnemonic will disappear and you will remember the Japanese word/sound directly.

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#11

At first sight spending a bit more effort

  1. Read the explanation
  2. Read the example sentences
  3. Repeat the grammar : どころではない → Not the time place x3-5

Rule of thumb here is if you miss any in the learn review, you probably didn’t spend enough time internalizing it.

On miss

  • If miss was blank, redo above steps
  • If miss was a synonym, review synonym descriptions, reread example sentences
  • If miss was just a bad guess, review my bad guess’s grammar point , reread grammar description, then reread correct answer grammar point and example sentences again.

The only other thing I’d recommend is trying to better time your reviews. At the minimum ensuring you are reviewing the newly learned items as soon as their ready. Everything gets harder when you delay the timing there.

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#13

trust the process. eventually it will stick.

what’s important is that you put in the effort. try to remember as hard as you can. whether or not you end up recalling something is secondary, it’s the effort doing so that makes things stick. it’s the signal to your brain that this is something worth remembering.

not “somehow”. Bunpro has a cram function for that very reason.

1 Like
#14

I try to keep it as TL;DR as possible:

A language must seep into you. Brute-force memorization is ineffective. My advice is to always work with the complete sentence. How much did you understand? Did you get the gist of it? If not, spend a lot of time reading and listening to the example sentences. After a while, you’ll notice that you start getting them unconsciously. This is the gold you’re looking for.

My current workflow: audio mode first. Then read the Japanese. Then check the English translation.

Know that your discipline is finite. Work with it, not against it.

2 Likes
#15

So the gist of what everyone is saying is that the SRS functionality is there to reinforce and test your understanding, not there as a learning tool. I need to spend more time doing the up-front learning and not just rely on the SRS to eventually brute force the information into my brain.

4 Likes
#16

Personally, immerse with Japanese subtitles (or reading). Aim for content with images of some description. You will understand very little - that’s OK! What I focus on is a particular set of grammar/vocab points I’ve learnt recently, and how they connect and are used natively for a particular meaning. The images help with the meaning.

Also, if you do use Anki, set your leech threshold low and suspend the card. At some point in the future, you will encounter the word/vocab/grammar and need to understand it. Reset and relearn it, and you will find it much easier.

Finally, do whatever you can to eliminate pressure to doing reviews and failure. I found I procrastinated where I felt I needed to get 100%, but if you can maintain a level of insouciance toward the actual end result/% correct/ghosts it’s much easier to regular perform reviews.

2 Likes
#17

In my experience brute forcing it just works. Not sure if optimal but I just “trust the process” of SRS and eventually it sticks. It’s really frustrating, I know, but I eventually get it after just seeing something enough times. Although I’ll say I do read the N3 entries more carefully than N5 and N4. I feel like the earlier levels are much easier just to skim over and get the idea.

I think it’s also important to do reading and listening content to help things stick. I’ve been doing the Bunpro reading passages for each JLPT level + lesson as I go, and that has been useful. I only recently started watching jp subtitled videos and that has been very helpful as well for seeing the grammar points applied. Just search things like N5 or N4 podcast/vlog/etc, tons of youtubers who make this kind of content. I also try to pick up on grammar when watching anime (even with english subtitles, but in that case mostly watching for entertainment and not treating it like a real study session like the other videos).

Finally, once you hit N3 stuff there starts to get a ton of grammar points that are very close in meaning and it’s helpful to actually read the entries at the bottom related to synonyms/related points. I also compile them into tables with short nuance descriptions in a master Google Doc that I have so I can see them all in one place without having to flip between bunpro pages. The idea is to remove as much friction as possible when having to look things up.

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#18

Please learn the kanji first through a kanji learning service like wanikani that breaks apart the kanji into the radicals it’ll make your life much easier and concrete.

2 Likes
#19

As others mentioned, for vocab, understanding kanji and radicals will make learning new vocab easier. For grammar, immersion learning has worked best for me. Hearing a clever turn of phrase in a show that I am invested in makes the grammar really stick and become memorable.

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#20

You dont have to memorize grammar if you understand it, so I guess you could try understanding it first. There are a bunch of section to a variety of literature under every grammar point. If you read those, you will get a better understanding of the grammar. Grammar is usually not memorized. Vocab is more “pure memory,” but if you learn some Kanji beforehand (or at some point when you have learned enough Vocab) you will get some intution since patterns repeat constantly.

1 Like
#21

For me a few things really help, firstly always do the wrap up. If you have more than 5-10 items wrong then wrap those up in chunks. Second, set your queue order to Ascending SRS so your lowest items are always the first ones you review.

I’d also suggest switching the grammar point to reading mode. I’ve been studying Japanese for 8 years, passed N2 and probably get only 65-70% score on the grammar. I think Cloze writing can be incredibly obtuse and frustrating from even as early as N4.

If you’re getting 50% wrong you should probably add fewer items to your queue and take your time until you feel confident with grammar. You are still learning even if you get something wrong.

Also Ghosts don’t work for SRS. You can disable them or set them to a high SRS level and you’ll learn better.

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