How do you decide whether you've gotten a review right or not?

Bunpro
#1

I started doing bunpro reviews the same way I do wanikani reviews. Apart from things like typos they’re either right or wrong, but this isn’t actually how it is with Bunpro. it didn’t really occur to me that there’s actually different approaches you can take.

I’m asking this question because I think I might be developing bad habits.

Here’s an example: お客さんが来るので、 _____ 綺麗にしてください

The prompt for this review was “as possible”, I know the word for “as X as possible” is なるべく so that’s what I type in, receive the green correct answer and move on.

The thing is, I didn’t read the rest of the sentence. I don’t even know if I know what the rest of the sentence means despite knowing all the other grammar constructions within it.

So the obvious conclusion is to make sure you read the sentence as well. But if you don’t understand the sentence, do you backspace your answer and intentionally get it wrong? What if it’s only because there’s vocab you’re not familiar with?

I’ve also been doing this too with “formal” questions that I didn’t realize wanted formal form so instead of writing とおもいます i wrote とおもう, got it wrong, backspaced my answer and wrote the formal form because “I knew that”.

How do you guys decide whether you’ve “earned” the correct answer or not? It’d be cool one day if a feature was implemented that required you to write the english translation as well as the japanese keyword

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#2

I’m assuming you’ve hid the English in reviews like me? I’m obviously less fluent than you are, but what I do is I read the whole sentence aloud or in my head to practice reading(toggle furigana if I need to), answer the grammar if I know it, then click on “English” if there’s a word I didn’t get and enter it into Houhou. For the casual/polite, you can usually see what form is required under the sentence, and if you can’t they accept both answers. Though you’re further than I am so might be different for you! :slight_smile:

#3

I think that’s fine. Sometimes I miss that it specifically wants polite or casual, but most of the time it’s not relevant to the actual grammar point. In those cases, I just mark myself right.

Here’s another example of when I mark myself correct. For たら, you need to know the conjugation of the verb used in the sentence. One time the verb was one of those godan verbs that looks like an ichidan verb, and I got the conjugation wrong. But I still knew you went into た-form and added ら, so I saw no need to be marked wrong for not recognizing the verb was a godan verb.

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#4

I actually asked myself all these questions, too. And I also tend to not read the sentences properly at times. When I catch myself doing this, I try to change my behaviour for the next reviews :wink:

Regarding your example, なるべく, I think there is actually something you know about it: It can go anywhere as-is! There is no pesky な or に or の or だ that needs to be fitted at the front or at the back. So I think that it is ok (for me) not to read the whole sentence. (I regret that I don’t make use of the reading practice, but that’s a different story.)

Also, initially I was very strict to myself. If I missed out on some unrelated information, say polite vs. casual, I would tell myself I need to pay more attention to reading the English sentence. But I’ve weakened this a bit because it just happened so often! (And now even Bunpro itself checks back occasionally and tells me that I need the other one, which is soooo super-awesomely great :slight_smile: ) Another example is the verb conjugation that seanblue mentioned, I treat it in the same way if it is not part of the grammar point.

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