Since the site is down right now anyway, why not discuss something controversial (I know it’s going to be controversial, trust me )
Exactly 14 days after I started picking up grammar using Bunpro, I now finished all the JLPT N5 grammar lessons. On the WaniKani forums, I have a study log where I document how far I can get in just one year of learning Japanese (there are various reasons for why I am doing this, but I doubt that anyone will find that interesting lol).
My question is: What speed could be considered fast regarding achieving a certain JLPT level grammar wise?
hey man. I did a similar thing- I don’t think I’m a full year into using bunpro and I’m currently nearly finished with n1. I was doing 6-7 points per day till n3 or so then took it down to 3 and occassionally 4. At first I thought I made a huge mistake as I forgot EVERYTHING I learnt lol and the reviews were killing me. However, I adjusted and it ended up working out very well.
A comment that I read on the bunpro forums that really helped me keep going at this fast pace even if I didn’t take it all in iirc was something like, ‘your brain can take in much more than you think it can’. I kinda used this philosophy and it made me realise the guy who commented this was completely right.
One thing I will say though is don’t put off mastering verb conjugations like the basic forms such as passive etc. It’ll really help to get it done early.
I think speed will depend on how much Japanese you manage to do outside of bunpro. As @SoreWaMaichiru mentions, early on I would study grammar but my general Japanese ability was too low to meaningfully engage with native content, so I would forget a lot of it because pure bunpro SRS practice was not enough to really fully assimilate these constructs.
So I guess the question is not so much “how fast can you do Bunpro” but “how fast can you do everything else”.
Personally my objective during the first year was to reach a level somewhere around N3, and I mostly succeeded (I went beyond for kanji, I hit the target for grammar but was a bit weak on the vocab). I think that’s a pretty decent target, because at that level you start to be able to meaningfully engage with native material.
Specifically for grammar, I did about 2 lessons a day every day (perhaps a little bit slower during N5, and a little bit faster later on).
I completet N5 with 1 lesson per day, although I got a bit lazy at some point and had 4 days of doing nothing (except for reviews)
This is something I absolutely agree on And if I had known this earlier, I would have started learning Japanese a long time ago I was always scared because kanji is soooooo big, but now that I am finally learning it, it’s not even nearly that hard that I thought it would be
Thanks for the tip! I will keep it in mind When I started learning it, I was at first a bit astonished by the fact that there exists a polite form for pretty much everything, but now, I am finding it pretty fun and cool
Learning a new language is never a short journey. This whole speed thing is partially kinda like a challenge to myself, seeing how fast it takes me to learn a language that is said to be more difficult And don’t worry, I think I will enjoy learning Japanese a lot, as it’s been a wish I’ve had for almost 11 years now
i take the uncommon position that its fine to go as fast as you want. As long as you do all of your reviews every day, it should be fine. Yes, in the beginning, your understanding of certain grammar points might go down by a little. But, if you ever dont know what the grammar point means, just skim the lesson when you get it wrong after a review.
I personally would rather have a 75% understanding of 500 grammar points than an 80% understanding of 200 grammar points. The SRS algorithm is there to make sure you dont forget stuff, no matter how much stuff you add. If you do get it wrong, just reread the article. Learning grammar faster lets you read stuff sooner and actually enjoy immersion.
There was also a guy who got perfect 180/180 on N1 in 9 months + nearly fluent in reading from constant study all day everyday.
His post has been removed so check the comment that one of the guy posts
(check below comment for more details)
Since I think that it is really important to get into reading ASAP, I absolutely agree! Reading helps putting everything I’ve learned into a context and usage and makes one familiar with the language. My goal is to start reading Japanese books/manga/stuff to read by summer this year, while also working on kanji, vocab and grammar knowledge.
(Btw don’t I know you from WaniKani?)
I think so, too! Even though there were certain grammar point that I kept getting wrong, I eventually (about 5 days ago) started to getting them correct, so even though I had troubles with them, thanks to the SRS, constant reviews and some work, I still managed to learn them well, despite learning at such a fast pace!
Whoever he is, he just earned my whole respect!
Thanks a lot, I will read through it very carefully when I have time!
Thanks a lot (or did you mean the guy that @SoreWaMaichiru mentioned? ) My goal was to do it in ten days but I got a bit lazy for four days, but I think it’s still pretty neat! I will start with N4 grammar as soon as I feel somewhat comfortable with N5 grammar (which, I hope, will only take a week at most but if I need more time for that step, I’ll just give it more time :D)
Np. The best method really is to read visual novels with textractor and with a click of a button add every new word to anki with yomichan dictionary. Here’s an example vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seAMOvIiFcw
(you dont have to add image + sound to your cards since it takes more time) This method is good once you reach a few thousand words too. Jazzy’s post goes into detail about that
I wish you the best on reaching n4 next!
I find this approach heinous. Not meant to be offensive to OP!
I do one grammar point a day. I ensure I understand it fully in context, and then move on to the next, whilst continuing to do reviews. If a grammar point is easy enough, i’ll do 2-3 in a day. This isn’t a marathon or a race, its language learning, and you simply can’t speed run it. There’s no rush. Im half a year into learning grammar and i’m only halfway through N5. I can also confidently get through and comprehend junior level manga with just this bare minimum (Yotsubato, Shirokuma Cafe)
Speed-running grammar will ensure you retain nothing in the end, and all the time will have been essentially wasted.
Yes, if you don’t regularly review, use and train it, which is not what I was planning to do It’s not like I’m doing this much in such a short ammount of time. I do study every day for four hours very intense, only focusing on what I am learning at the moment, and so far, I’m not having any troubles. This might change later on, but if it does, I will adjust my learning speed accordingly.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s wasted time, but I do definitely agree with your base premise (and not just with speed running grammar, but anything in general).
At the end of the day, it will take longer to properly assimilate the information that was consumed in such short amount of time. IOW, there’s no real benefit in speed running the learning process.
To be clear, challenging yourself is not a bad thing at all. It’s when you overdue it when it becomes (not totally, but) somewhat pointless.
Hey. I’m not completely sure but I would assume that it would. However, I would be more worried if the VNs work with the mac itself than textractor. When running raw JP Vns you have to switch your ‘unicode’ to Japanese so the text doesnt bug out fully. Not sure if this is easy or not to do on Macs myself unfortunately.
If it doesn’t I highly reccomend buying some sort of entry level windows pc as most VNs have very very low requirements to run (1gb ram etc for most) so you can play them and learn from them.
Anyone I’ve successfully seen learn Japanese to a reasonable level in a reasonably quick time either online or in real life has one thing in common which is just an insane amount of input that they enjoyed engaging with. Everything else is secondary (Bunpro, vocab, etc). You also need to ask yourself what you want from Japanese (do you want to be able to handwrite kanji? Is conversation more important to you than reading novels? Etc) as exactly what input and what secondary tools you use will vary based on those kinds of questions. There is probably some wisdom in rushing early grammar (N5-N3) to get it roughly in your head so long as you’re actually getting input to supplement this. I dont see a point in rushing N2 - N1 on Bunpro as it covers quite a wide range and most of the points are basically “vocab” at that stage so it is better to acquire them from input and then study them more in depth in Bunpro after you’re already familiar with them. One of the reasons I stopped using Bunpro was precisely because I ended up just picking stuff up naturally and didn’t feel the need to SRS it, especially for more literary phrases. The edge(?) case I can see for speed running Bunpro itself would be if you were trying to rush to pass the JLPT but that is not necessarily a good goal in itself.
Anyway, good luck to the OP. If you’re serious about speed running I wouldn’t wait until the summer to start reading (if you don’t like reading then heavy active listening) and, equally, unless you love Wanikani I’d change to using Anki for kanji and vocab and focus on frequency and mining only. Keep in mind that speed running Wanikani and Bunpro is not the same as speed running Japanese, although they have some relation. The massive amount of level 60 posts from people who have forced themselves to do Wanikani for 1-2 years and the say “I’ve read 5 manga and I’m maybe ready to do the N3” is insane. Just remember these tools are secondary to whatever your actual goal is.
I was about to say pretty much the same thing as CursedKitsune.
You don’t need to wait until summer. I was VERY impatient at the beginning, and I started to try manga with half N5 done on Bunpro. I was kinda devastated at first, and it was kinda impossible with proper tools, but it helped me wonders. If you have half N4 grammar and the appropriate vocab, you probably wouldn’t suffer as much as I did (on easy material, of course).
Yeah, pretty much my experience. Sometimes it takes a few days, but with all reviews, ghosts, and reading, it all falls into place. What I have particular problems with, I bookmark, and study it with other resources after. Cure Dolly also helped immensely with this area of grammar as well.
I find this a bit of a perfectionist or completionist approach, if your learning work well like this, I don’t find much of a problem. But language is quite organic and messy sometimes, It’s a little counterproductive to approach it like this, in my opinion. I don’t know every grammar from my native language portuguese (pretty bad scores on highschool as well unfortunately), nor english, but I still can understand and interpret almost everything in both languages.
If there’s one grammar point I don’t get easily, I know the next point I MAY get easily, and even if I don’t, after a few days, I will get most of them anyway because of the reviews/ghosts/input. Also, learning grammar X may also help me in learning grammar Y that I have seen before, but didn’t understand clearly.
So, “rushing” actually helps me more than “not rushing”…
)
And if I had known this earlier, I would have started learning Japanese a long time ago 
I was always scared because kanji is soooooo big, but now that I am finally learning it, it’s not even nearly that hard that I thought it would be