How does the SRS work

[Raifu]

I recently started using Bunpro and I did 60 lessons over my first two days, and then 30 on the subsequent day. I’m getting really overloaded with reviews, I had 120 a couple of hours ago now it is back up to 110, how does the SRS work and why do I get such huge numbers of reviews when I haven’t even done that many lessons.

[FredKore]

You probably triggered a bunch of “ghosts” with incorrect answers. They’re basically extra reviews of things that you missed. And you can control how frequently ghosts get triggered under Settings.

Ghost Reviews (Update! July 12, 2018)

Update: July 12, 2018 Choose Ghost Review Aggressiveness When Ghost Reviews are set to ‘ON’ in settings, a Ghost Review will be created for a sentence if you miss it once in your reviews. Set Ghost Reviews to ‘Minimal’ to only add a sentence to Ghost Reviews if you miss the same sentence more than once. Tweaks to Ghost Review SRS Ghost Review intervals are now 4 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, and 48 hrs, meaning that you will see your Ghost sentence four times over the course of the next four da…

Btw, I would not recommend so many lessons at once. You’ll get bogged down with reviews. There have been a couple posts on this.

How many grammar points to learn per day?

How many grammar points should I learn per day? 1? 5?

Suggestion: maximum number of ghosts

Yeah, to be honest, the “On” setting in general feels far too aggressive. I switched from “Minimal” to “On” when I was averaging ~20 reviews per day, and after only a week or so, the count shot all the way up to ~150 reviews per day with an accuracy of 70-80%.   Granted, a stack of ghosts takes much less time to tear through than a stack of grammar I haven’t seen in a while because they’re in later-stage SRS intervals. Still, I’d suggest not spawning any ghosts for grammar points that are “…

[faken]

But he is speedrunning the SRS so he does not have to pay premium. I know him irl and he is too broke to pay for the subscription. Poor man. Guess he will have to deal with the reviews.

[FredKore]

I feel for him. But what’s the game plan? Cram all 111 N5 grammar points in 30 days and hope that it all sticks? Language learning, especially Japanese, is a long-term game. It seems cramming will be of limited use.

[narfi]

I suspect this question appears in every FAQ for every SRS system out there.
Except, perhaps, for wanikani. AFAIK, wanikani throttles the reviews, which helps push the problems out a little bit further. However, they get the opposite question of “why are you holding me back in my first few weeks?”.
Yeah, studying Japanese is a longer term endeavor, at least when you come from a European language. IMHO, it’s all about the pacing.

[Raifu]

I’m actually coming from WaniKani, so that’s why I’m so confused with how Bunpro works because it is so different from what I’ve used before. Also I have finished Minna No Nihongo 1 and 2, along with Tae Kim’s Grammer Guide, so there is a lot of grammar I’m already very familiar with, so these earlier levels aren’t that much of a challenge content wise.

[FredKore]

Ah. Gotcha. I’d say give it a week or two. Studying grammar with SRS is really different than kanji or vocab.
Btw, if you really don’t want to be quizzed on something because you know it really well, then click “I know this” button, and it gets marked as level 12 and you don’t see it again.

[Raifu]

Ah ok, thanks man.

[cbaidon45]

I really feel frustrated about this too, why do we need “Ghost reviews”, when the whole point of SRS is to repeat more frquently what you get wrong? Is there any way to completely turn off Ghost reviews and let the SRS do its job?

[mrnoone]

Hey and welcome on the community forums

It is possible to turn of ghost reviews in “settings”.

You open the drop down menu first by clicking your avatar/username on the main site.

Then choose settings:

Then choose ghost option you like:

Then click on “save” and you are done

I hope it helps,
Cheers!