Disagree here. FSRS does not magically solve being frustrated at missing cards. Not using FSRS doesn’t mean that missing a card is the tool’s fault either.
Getting a card wrong can mean one failed in a way that has nothing to do with how often cards are shown to you such as being too tired to study, adding too many cards, being distracted or simply not spending enough time trying to recall an answer.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but I’m reading a novel currently. I watch a few dramas on the train/at home or listen to native podcasts as much as possible. I have conversations daily at lunch with Japanese coworkers in Japanese. I’m comfortable with what I’m comfortable with and wanted to use Bunpro as a scaffolded method of getting to the next level in conjunction with what I’m doing elsewhere and also pluck out some of the grammar likely to show up on the N2.
N2 in December. I probably would have passed it a few weeks ago, but I lost track of time in the reading section and I think I blew my chances. Apart from that, goals are more nebulous. Reading books and having more natural conversations about more difficult topics. If it appears that I am “wandering” it’s because I listened to too many random opinions on and off the internet claiming to have the “Right Way” to do things when I was just starting. Most people have no idea what SLA looks like and only pull from their experiences.
No, as I said elsewhere, I have tried all the methods Bunpro offers. I am strictly asking if it’s possible because I didn’t see success from having the hints on full-blast (or bread-crumbing them as I tried to answer). So I was wondering if I’d learned them accurately or had just appeared to have learned them and furthermore wondered if removing hints entirely would help the process.
I am aware of this. This is basically how I got to this point in Japanese, just blended with islands of time where I went super-heavy on grammar guides or vocab books in the sea of native input I’m getting. Another separate problem is that a lot of the methods people use for learning (light novels, VNs, manga, etc.) really do bore me or otherwise negate the joy of learning. So I’m happy to finally be at a level where I can learn from literary novels, which I enjoy much more.
Thank you for your response. Yes, as I said right after that, it is very inefficient. I’ve currently been using the same deck for nearly a year, though many years and much time was wasted with decks that ended up deleted.
I even had about 30 of those study-rings you can find at muji/loft/etc. fully filled out with vocab. The cycle is often tied to the lowering of immersion. If I spend hours per day on SRS, I lose a lot of time reading or listening to native content. There has to be balance and when it’s out of balance, rather than fix it, I have a very poor habit of purging it.
I think the solution is to have different question types:
Without restricting the options, the synonym problem gets worse. These ideas aren’t new, they’re the format of questions seen in textbooks. The main challenge is making the questions hard so you cannot metagame. However, given that the JLPT makes their questions hard, I believe this is possible.
Answering the question on topic title:
Yes, it’s possible once you understand the vocab of the sentences. Before you know that - no harm looking on hints to get the nuance right. I’d most likely leave one target word in english just so you don’t need to spend time thinking what’s the sentence about.
One of the reasons I strongly recommend doing the reading mode is that it is very hard to properly understand the nuance if you don’t know the meaning of the sentence. And Bunpro’s sentences are very diverse and not “textbook” so it’s especially important here.
I don’t think it is. I’m doing N5, N4 where I understand all vocab and maybe in 40% of all sentences it’s just not clear from the context what it wants. But I don’t feel bad for turning 4th hint to see what exactly it wants from me.
My impression of Bunpro is that it is built on the typical Japanese learning solution of “in this situation use xy formula” which we see in Jdramas. …and this method is actually not the best or most effective to learn the language.
It has its uses in certain situations. For me, it is for reviewing known grammar points with the aim of identifying the same grammar points in other media, usually books, and understand their proper use. For others, well some of them explained how they use Bunpro here.
I have this feeling based on the forum that Bunpro users are very fond of the site and very loyal, (Exhibit A - the thread on AI) while most of them still finds the hints and how the whole system works frustrating (Exhibit B - the whole thread on the hints which fill you with rage) and the SRS system needs improvement (Exhibit C - several threads on this).
It smells like cognitive dissonance.
You don’t need to treat Anki as sacred. The only thing you really can’t do is use the hard button as your version of ‘again’. Though even that can be fixed with an addon.
There are strategies you can use to reduce workload if things are getting away from you. One way is to drop your leech threshold by a couple misses, or take the top 20% most lapsed young cards, mark them as leeches and suspend them (there are people who recommend doing this periodically anyway). Then you can put all your marked leeches in a filtered deck when things have calmed down.
It’s built on a teaching strategy called 文型練習, the same thing that text books like Genki and Minna no Nihongo use. There’s a reason it’s so widely used: it’s much more effective than other methods of teaching japanese. They tried other methods previously, and those mostly failed at teaching people japanese.
It’s based on the premise that people do not learn grammar from first principles, building sentences out from the blueprint of grammar rules each time from scratch, but rather learn language by imitating entire clauses and sentences they’ve heard. There is a lot of empirical study that supports this. It’s recently caught on among the influencer grammar guru types as “chunking,” and they act like they’ve discovered this whole new method, despite it being used for thirty-odd years by the textbooks they badmouth.
Yes, you can learn a language just by imitating a large number of sentence patterns. In fact, you already have done that at least once.
I’m loyal because after 8 years learning Japanese it’s the best resource I’ve used. If there’s any better app/site, please do share it. Yes Bunpro is flawed, especially the default settings, but it does work.
I read your reply, but I’m not sure how to respond. It seems like you already know enough Japanese to do what you want to do and N2 seems like unnecessary effort.
But if all you’re looking for is an answer to your question, I’ll just be bold and say no, it’s not. The hints are absolutely necessary.
To be fair, if there isn’t a system by which people can find that correct method, then I feel the defaults would be a Bunpro’s official recommendation. Other than trial and error, how else would people find an appropriate methodology?
I’m a Bunpro superfan that figured it out on my own, but as someone who has a group of people following in my footsteps, setting them up to not be completely overwhlemed was its own crazy learning experience 
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A large part of that was adapting things to Wanikani’s level pacing which is something I’ve been fine tuning as I observe some folks approaching N4 with the WK / BP pairing.
I feel like I’m developing a bad habit by not reading the sentences now D: I’ve got so many reviews that trying to read each sentence would easily double my review time and leave me with no time to learn my daily goal, how do you guys do it? Is it more feasible to switch to doing that once n5 vocab is complete?
I think others pointed out in this thread as well, that bunpro seems to use a hybrid approach, context plus strict grammar concepts, I think this latter what you understand under teaching grammar from first principles. Turning off hints in this approach seems counterproductive, because without context, you remain with the primary principles, or not even that.
From what you wrote, chunking seems to be somewhere in the immersion field, however, the approach does not seem to be perfect for the following reason: you learn specific grammar concepts in a specific context, while in real life communication you face an unlimited number of possible contexts. This is why context and immersion in all areas are paramount to me. Without context and added immersion, the result would be stunted.
Comparing early childhood language acquisition with adult learning is misleading in my opinion, because the two work in very different ways. I learned my mother tongue very differently than I learn languages now as an adult and I would likely die of frustration if I had to learn the same way as a baby/ small child.
As adults, we have a framework to build on. We have understanding how certain things work, we can sit down and learn 1000 words… have you ever seen a 4 year old sitting down learning 1000 words in their own mother tongue?
I mentioned in an other thread discussing books that children speak their mother tongue(s) proficiently at their own stage. A 4 year old child can speak their mother tongue perfectly as appropriate for their age, even if they do not speak academically or do not know the usual average number of words in their own language.
While to me chunking and learning elements of speaking/ language usage seems to fit into immersion, I do not agree that it is the most effective learning method. At least not for me, as chunks do not help me when I want to communicate what I want in real life, if the situation does not fit the bracket of what I learned. There is a finite number of chunks facing a possibly unfinite number of real life situations.
To extrapolate from chunks designated for specific situations to cross-use them in a different context, presupposes a high level of language usage/consciousness, which starts after intermediate level, at least for me. I sincerely hope everyone else has all these ready puzzles in their heads waiting to be used and they can pull the right one the right time from the very beginning. From some examples in this forum, apparently it is not just me who usually rather pulls a blank.
For me the most effective way of learning is passive immersion with comprehensible input and relevant level active output. How I use bunpro to aid my learning approach, I detailed in an earlier comment.
For passive immersion of comprehensible input I use podcasts for audio, for my own level and preferably podcasters of my own gender, societal status and background.
For audio fun, I watch “real-life” jdramas, that is, not fantasy, not sci-fi, not historical as language usage differs from modern/average. I am trying to watch specific themed jdramas only if they intersect with my professional background, those are still super hard.
And I read a lot, I love reading. For that, I use lingq due to ease of use.
After the jlpt few weeks ago, I slowed down on bunpro, now I do one new grammar element per day and I immediately try to find it in the immersion I do paralel.
If I would start learning another language, likely next year either French or Korean depending on factors beyond my control, I would use the 20/80 principle to lay a strong grammar and vocabulary foundation in the beginning (plus hangul if Korean), to have the basics down quickly and build on that. For grammar, I would select a solid course book, preferably something that runs from elementary to advanced. Vocabulary anki, reading and listening using the same platforms as now.
I could not use this approach for Japanese as had a lot of random elements of the language already and going back consciously to the basics now is a waste of time and effort considering the possible gains. Since I wanted to do the jlpt, bunpro seemed a good choice to review and solidify grammar points due to the very specific nature of the test.
The part where I can implement the approach which seems effective to me are the kanji, I learn those separately, and while it seemed futile in the beginning, now things start to fall into their place as a I progress. This is specific to the Japanese language.
I cannot say for the vocab, because I use Bunpro only for grammar. I don’t have a rigid goal to do a certain amount of new points every day. I have this timer
Recently I also started trying to copy the voice, because it has brought me a lot of good results in another language, here’s the topic
I think doing so with vocab will also work, especially trying to create new sentences and if there’s a native audio trying to reproduce it.
I personally really like to embrace mindfulness while learning, it’s really hard to study without a rigid framework but I think at the end that is what makes it lively in a long, at least for me.
Bunpro is 100% based on 文型. It is pedagogically sound for adult learners and these textbooks were written by academics who are experts in second language acquisition. Resources like A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar are also based on 文型. A hallmark of this style is that explanations are arranged under headwords.
That’s intense. How do you fix leeches personally? Just let them dry out away from you and engage again later on?
Sometimes. Often there’s a problem with the card itself, which I fix. Sometimes I’ll realize I’m shaky on the kanji, so I’ll refresh myself on that
I couldn’t have explained it any better, that’s exactly the situation I find myself in
