How possible is it to do reviews with no hints?

Bunpro
#1

I want Bunpro to work for me, but when I do cloze reviews (after learning about 15 items or so), I start just drawing huge blanks with every question. I’m often like, “I have no possible idea what this could be,” for as many reviews as I have. But it comes on suddenly. The first week, week and a half, it’s good. I’m thinking, struggling, but getting most of the answers correct. Then, one day, it’s like I reach a limit and it’s all gone except for a very few memorable ones.

That leads to frustration. Frustration leads to giving up or resetting the deck again and trying to learn it "Better This Time"🄫.

So, now, I’m just doing one grammar point per day with the goal of answering it without hints. Just study, read, cram one point for an hour - two hours, writing examples, really thinking about it. The goal is to answer questions without hints, but is that reasonable? Is that possible?

Fellow cloze users, what do you consider success and how do you keep yourself from the Total Meltdown?

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#2

Hello there! I was thinking about this too. I’ve been trying to use less and even no hint but, turns out, I just remembered the exact sentence. When I stumbled across a new vocabs or grammar, I find it so difficult to answer.

My suspect is because when I first doing it, my mind still freshed and recognized most of the sentence (maybe because short-term memory?). So, I gave up and use hints now and then.

As for my opinion about your decision, it’s understandable that you reset your deck because you think you’re bad at some. But, honestly, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think Bunpro is an SRS tool which makes your brain remembers things like vocabularies and grammar. If you reset your deck, it’s like telling Bunpro you haven’t learned anything yet. The vocabularies you’re actually remembered better than others now appears more frequently.

My suggestion is that you can still do Bunpro without hints. And when it gets too hard, you can reveal one hint. If you’re still stuck, use the next hint. If you know the answer because you remember the sentence but you still don’t know why that vocab fits the sentence or why a particular grammar is used, you can find Japanese sentence that contains that word, or ask AI. And after you use Bunpro, I suggest you embrace yourself in Japanese media to improve your listening, and reading. I also suggest to write sentences, trying to use various words and use various conditions. Additionally, record yourself using Japanese to tell about your day is also a good way to really strengthen your memory (It also makes your pronounciation better).

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#3

I think there’s a point where you just end up memorizing the sentences, which IMO isn’t bad either (sentence mining is a popular learning method).

I’m also coming back after a reset, forcing myself to review without hints destroyed my motivation.

For people like us, maybe the “best” way is to finish your target JLPT level normally with hints, then reset and re-do the whole thing with only Japanese hints or no hints.

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#4

Personally? I just leave all the hints on.

Without them, it feels way too much like a game of “what number am I thinking of?”
Especially when I’m doing 30 grammar points in one review session, it’s extremely difficult to recall which of the umpteen points you learned 4 months ago. You’ll learn so many different grammar points that have really similar meanings but different nuances, so even if you figure out what the sentence is trying to say, you just kind of have to scroll through all of the ones that could potentially fit until you find whichever one it wants.

Unfortunately, this has resulted a bit in me realizing what key words in the hints correspond with what grammar points, so I sometimes find myself just glossing over the actual example sentence and trying to answer only based on the hint.

Overall, though, when you’re trying to force something as nuanced as grammar points into simple flashcards, this is unfortunately bound to happen in my opinion.

The key I think is to read a lot and find them out in the wild to really cement them into your memory.

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#5

I’ve seen the creators or staff at Bunpro saying that cloze is the best way to do it. Do they mean cloze with hints on in that case? If not, what do they have in mind I wonder…

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#6

Everything destroys my motivation. I might just be mentally weak haha.

#7

Thank you for this thoughtful reply! I’ll consider this and leave hints off for now, using them slowly through the reviews.

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#8

Sometimes if there are multiple synonyms that could fit in the gap, but Bunpro still demands that specific one, I look at this word/grammar’s SRS level in upper right corner - if it is low, that’s something learned recently , if it is high - that’s something from long time ago. It requires having already learned some items though, but i consider it a neat way to get a hint when I’m troubled

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#9

I do not like the way the questions are asked, but unfortunately the tests use the same type question form so if you do want to pass a test at some point, getting used to the format is useful.

For me, I am first doing it with some hints on and then will redo and review them once I went through the whole list to clear out what their distinctions are. And for now if I really can’t recall I take a blind guess then go into the “show info” section and see what it was that tripped me up.

I guess one of the things I keep in mind is “Getting things wrong is part of the process” and not let failures, even repeatedly getting something wrong 5-6 times in one session get me down. It just shows that I do not understand that part yet and need more time on it.

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#10

(post deleted by author)

#11

Do you continue learning new things at that time, or take a break?

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#12

Typically during my study time I take a few breaks whenever my mind say “Enough for now”. Make tea or coffee then head back again. Maybe listen to a song or 2. So… 1 study session with a few breaks.