How to keep training specific grammar points

Bunpro
#1

I’m currently just crossing the halfway point of the N4 grammar lessons. One of my biggest concerns with the system at this point is that there are some situations in the example sentences that cause me to focus more on how to answer the questions rather than understanding how the grammar is used. The kinds of things that push me toward that are when the drills:

  • use grammar constructions in other parts of the sentence that I haven’t learned yet,
  • don’t give sufficient information for me to choose between similar grammar constructions that are being learned concurrently, and
  • require the combination of multiple grammar constructions early in the example sentences, rather than starting out with the most “vanilla” (constructions that match the standard archetype) and slowly building from there.

In these cases, I have to shrug and just try to remember the answer to that particular sentence, rather than read the sentence thoroughly and reinforce my understanding. Getting the answer right is a sign of progress in learning the point, better than getting the answer wrong, but is the lowest level of progress when compared to understanding the grammar, and being able to understand it in input “out in the wild” or use it in output. I’m concerned that when I do this, the progress chart gets sandbagged by saying I’m more skilled in the grammar lesson than I really am.

So, I think there is an improvement request in there for Bunpro to update the example sentences so that the initial ones only include grammar constructions that the user would have studied previously in the study path, gradually progress to include more and more complex grammar, and save the ones with grammar that they wouldn’t be expected to know for the very end. (ie. start with a few sentences
with only standard, non-past verbs, gradually add past, te-, progressive, past-progressive, passive, causative, etc.) I know they are revamping their SRS system, and I’m hoping that this is a part of it.

However, people are obviously using the system to progress as-is, so my biggest question for my fellow users right now is: How do you build on the introduction to grammar points until it is natural?

The common answer is just to spam input, which is definitely a way to do it, but for much of the N4 grammar, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in my reading so far. Some appear all of the time (こと、そう、よう、あまり、など…）but am I really going to master some of them well enough to have recognition when they occasionally pop up during random input? しか～ない、～は～の一つだ、～ない～はない、すこしも～ない、すくなくない、くらいは… I’m not sure how to effectively drill these enough in Bunpro so that I can start recognizing them “out in the wild.”

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Unexpected custom review sentence behavior
#2

I don’t think the “fill in” mode works for Bunpro. For grammar it is useless, just use reading mode and choose yes/no to grade yourself. In many cases I cannot translate the whole sentence but if I know the main grammar point, I’ll mark it as “yes”. For vocabulary, filling answers mostly works well, but several entries have the exact same kanji and require different answers, so just try to think of all possible answers and if the required one is among them and you guessed wrong, undo it and type the right one.

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#3

I second this. Changing to reading mode completely fixed this issue for me. Make sure you’re understanding the grammar usage before you mark it as understood.

3 Likes
#4

I think an ability to recognize that something “looks like grammar” comes naturally and pretty quickly. When you notice one, you could look it up on Bunpro then and there. And vice versa, if you are studying e.g. しか～ない, you could search through a couple of texts you’ve read recently and see if there’s an example you could use to contextualize it. Or if your main input is listening, searching through subtitles could be an option. N4 and N3 points should come up pretty regularly.

So I think I’d agree with the approach of spamming input and letting it drive grammar (and also vocab) study.

2 Likes
#5

Thanks, I’ll give this a shot. Since input proficiency is my main goal right now, it’s probably adding unnecessary grief to drill using output.

1 Like
#6

It’s funny, I came here to check forums because I’m having almost exactly the same problem. I just finished N5 grammar a few days ago and I’m struggling bad with this website. I spent about 3 months on N5. I was originally doing vocab and grammar but was getting absolutely killed by the difficulty of the sentences in the reviews. I have a really hard time understanding the hints, and often feel like a hint can mean 3 or 4 things that I learned and that I’m basically just trying to guess at that point which one I should be using. I get them wrong like 75% of the time and then that just piles onto the end of my reviews. I was spending 3-4 hours on reviews on this site and finally collapsed from exhaustion and reset vocab. I can’t do it. My eyes gloss over after like an hour in trying to figure out the hint rather than actually trying to learn grammar.
Even after switching to grammar only I’ve been about 60 - 90 minutes of reviews on like 30ish items because I’m constantly getting the fill in questions wrong over and over and over. Sometimes I get the same thing wrong 10 times in a row and my brain is just checking out.
This is easily the most difficult “beginner” learning resource that I’ve tried, like by far. The example sentences seem excruciatingly hard for someone who is just beginning to learn Japanese and that difficulty is compounded by trying to figure out the hints for the already complex sentences.
I’ve stopped learning new things here until I feel like I can get reviews under control. I am taking the advice in this thread and turning on read and grade as well to see if that helps but I think I need a self help group or something for how bad I am doing here. I’m really impressed with how other people are getting through all of the grammar here, definitely much smarter than I am.

6 Likes
#7

As a beginner, input practice is far more difficult due to many factors. So changing to the option reading and grading yourself should help you a lot.
I’d generally suggest to focus on input for now and not so much on output (as in “forming own sentences”; parroting the pronunciation is totally fine, and I’d say even a must from the beginning). As a beginner, you need time to get a gist of how the language sounds and works. That’s already a huge task, so simultaneously trying to output will mostly end in frustration, wrong learned patterns, or worse, giving up on learning completely.

Make sure to use the reading practices here on Bunpro as well to see the grammar in other use cases. They have a native audio to listen along, translations there, and are sorted by the grammar lesson categories for N5-N1.
I’d also suggest to use other native content, like “Comprehensible Japanese” on Youtube. There’s a playlist for absolute beginners, so the sentences are not too complicated, slowly spoken, and you should find some you learned here.
In short: Try to get as much comprehensible input as possible (as much you can bear the ambiguity and fit in your daily life) and break down what you hear and read.
Japanese is one of the popular languages, so there’s plenty of content out there. :slight_smile:

Also, take your time reading through the lessons and linked sources as soon as you start learning new ones again. If you don’t mind AI, you can also ask your preferred AI to break down the example sentences for you to check if your own breakdown of them was close enough.

I don’t know if you learn vocab from other sources right now. Without learning vocab, your study of grammar will be much more difficult due to a lack of understanding the words in a sentence. So you will have to make sure to learn vocab. Which you can also do as reading and grading here to avoid early output and with that too much frustration. As long as you can understand at least 50-80% of a sentence, the grammar study should be (somewhat) possible.
If you encounter words you still don’t know, it’s also enough to rate a grammar point as understood if you can say for example “yeah, that ~だった is clearly forming the word in front of it into its past tense, so the person is talking about something that has already happened. Got it!”. Then you can check the translation if you were close enough and if you were wrong, check the lessons below again and undo your answer to mark it has hard to review it once more in your current session.

Regarding your last sentence: You don’t know each and every one’s past to come to a conclusion like that. Nobody is smarter than you, just because they might have already passed the very beginner stadium you’re currently at. Everyone here is on their own journey learning Japanese. Some are older than you and already study the language for decades, others just had another starting point and use Bunpro as one of their supplemental tools, or just have a more relaxed view on their studies and take their time going through the lessons.

I’d recommend viewing your Japanese learning journey as your own personal marathon, your yesterday-you being your one and only competition.
Use other language learners as a motivation and proof that it is in fact possible to learn Japanese to the level you aim for yourself, even if it currently doesn’t seem so when you get stuck.

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#8

Following up: I think moving to reading mode is the answer for now. I’m moving through reviews faster, and remembering the meaning of the grammar indicated (reading J->E) is much much easier than producing it from memory based on the clues provided (writing E->J). I’m planning on tackling output later, since I have no immediate need for it. Something about the writing mode just scrambles my brain, since I have to go through many layers of recall.

1 Like
#9

I feel for you. Try moving to reading mode for your grammar reviews. I also supplement with Renshuu lessons and drills just to get more practice, but less and less lately since 3 lessons per day on Bunpro keeps me pretty busy and seems to be a good pace for me. (Pretty aggressive for my life, TBH, and I’ve also paused vocab until my grammar catches up, but I’m managing somehow.) I was getting around 80% on my grammar drills before, so I was also spending a lot of time on ghosts, and also having trouble recalling the output based on the clues provided. I just got 98% in reading mode, with the parameter that I pass the card as long as I understand the grammar being quizzed. If my understanding is shaky, or wrong, I fail it.

#10

Thanks for the advice ya’ll. I got through reviews in like 15 minutes today with the read and grade and I agree it’s far easier. Gave me more time to look at new lessons, which is what I want. I ditched vocab here because I’m also doing NativShark and Wanikani and frequently using other sources and I get a lot of vocabulary from those. I’m trying to spend more time on podcasts and youtube videos as well so happy to get another playlist to listen to. My listening comprehensive is abysmal right now :slight_smile:

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#11

I agree with this,
I started over with BunPro Grammar; switched to reading and reveal and grade.
This helps a lot and also revealed to me how much i was just relying on reading the answer and filling it in.

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#12

Following up on this topic based on my experience over the 7 months since I posted it to now, and including my thoughts about custom review sentences.

Switching from fill in the blank to flash card reveal mode helped immensely. Input is my primary goal at the moment, so removing the output prompts from my review has made it much easier to clear cards.

I still firmly believe that the best thing Bunpro could do is

to update the example sentences so that the initial ones only include grammar constructions that the user would have studied previously in the study path, gradually progress to include more and more complex grammar, and save the ones with grammar that they wouldn’t be expected to know for the very end. (ie. start with a few sentences with only standard, non-past verbs, gradually add past, te-, progressive, past-progressive, passive, causative, etc.)

I’d go so far as to say that the first handful of review sentences should use the same top 10 nouns, verbs, and adjectives, so that the only thing that is new is the grammar construction being learned, and students didn’t have to worry about looking up new vocabulary or unfamiliar grammar while trying to lock in one that is in focus.

2 Likes
#13

Thanks for the follow up on this topic. I missed it the first time around and have been struggling with this exact thing for a long time. I’m so grateful to have noticed similar feedback from others and just switched over to reading mode.

I felt like I was stuck in super beginner hell forever because of the reasons you mentioned. Just hamstringing my progress as opposed to getting exposed to new grammar points and then consuming them in the wild. This is definitely more enjoyable.

You mentioned you were halfway through N4 before. How has your progress been since switching to reading mode?

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#14

Just hit the hallway mark on N3. I was scheduled to finish N3 this summer, but I had to take a break to desk with life things. If I keep up at 3/day, I’ll finish N3 by the end of October.

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#15

Sounds like you’re doing great! I know the taking a break due to life things all too well.

That’s a nice pace. I’m doing the same right now. It seems to be a good balance of not getting too bogged down with reviews and new information but also making steady progress.

頑張りましょう。

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#16

Honestly, I think it could go much faster if the issues I mentioned were addressed. When I can keep reviewing material I understand that has just one new point to drill, it feels like a breeze, and the lessons keep stacking effortlessly. But the reviews that have a bunch of new material keep bogging me down. I keep dreaming of a system that keeps track of what I know, and just keeps introducing one new thing once I’ve mastered the material that has been introduced, so that the vocab and grammar just keeps expanding. I can review 10 sentences like that for every 1 sentence that has a bunch of unfamiliar things I need to look up.

In lieu of that, the alternative is to just grind harder, and try to be judicious in what I look up and what I let pass. Honestly, just asking Chatgpt to generate 10 practice sentences using simple grammar and vocab to drill a given grammar point has been extremely helpful to build a build a working understanding of how a given grammar works in different contexts. I hope Bunpro is paying attention, because the difficulty level on some of the review sentences is wild. Sometimes I have to say, “I’m not sure what else is going on here, but I know that this grammar means this,” and move on.

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#17

Interestingly enough, the system you describe is very similar to the approach that the Migaku Academy course follows.

They introduce one new concept for each card and only construct sentences using previously learned content. That typically amounts to introducing a new grammar point and then three new vocabulary words using said grammar point.It builds on itself rather quickly and never makes you feel like something is foreign since you’ve been introduced to it previously.

Of course, another advantage of this is that you’re “organically” enforcing grammar and vocabulary by reusing previously learned concepts .Lastly, Migaku has built-in dictionaries that allow you to click on particular words if you forget their meaning, so you can still work through sentences that include concepts you’re learning.

I feel it could be possible to create a similar course on Bunpro, but it would require a substantial amount of work to refactor all the examples sentences. Essentially the grammar points could be interwoven with the vocabulary decks to create one “seamless” course.

I suppose the disadvantage would be that you have less variety per grammar point, but the grammar points could be reused through the course.

However, all that aside. I think the ChatGPT drills is great idea, so I also appreciate you sharing that. Hopefully as you keep going things change and become less cumbersome.

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#18

We have actually already done this for all grammar points from N5 to N3. 3 new sentences were created for each one which will go at the very beginning of the review tree that are very simple and only include grammar in its most simple form. The only reason this is not on the site yet is because we are waiting to get the audio recording done for them, so that they can have audio as soon as they are live.

I am quite surprised that you seem to be seeing grammar points that you have not yet learned in your reviews though, as we always get rid of these every time we find them and are quite careful not to create any new ones. If you are using the default Bunpro path, you should not see these. If you have any examples though, we will change them asap.

As for using the same sets of words in sentences, we tend to favor an approach of slowly introducing new vocabulary as much as possible, as it can get very boring very quickly to constantly encounter the same thing. But I think that is going to be something that differs from person to person.

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#19

We have actually already done this for all grammar points from N5 to N3.

Very exciting, I can’t wait for the release!

I am quite surprised that you seem to be seeing grammar points that you have not yet learned in your reviews

I’ve flagged several of the more egregious ones, but there are more in there.

As for using the same sets of words in sentences, we tend to favor an approach of slowly introducing new vocabulary as much as possible, as it can get very boring very quickly to constantly encounter the same thing.

I think a general heuristic of having the first sentence only use basic grammar except for the new grammar point, and only words from the top maybe 500-1000 vocab, and slowly expand from there in terms of ancillary grammar usage and vocab rarity. This would make it easy to be sure the user understands the grammar point itself before adding complexity. It is not uncommon for me to look at the example sentences in the lesson, or one of the early review sentences, and go cross eyed. Like, I thought I was learning, and here is all this stuff that is supposed to be graded for my level, but I’m totally lost! In those cases, something got lost in the graduated approach. I’d rather have 10 “easy” reviews (as in, I can comprehend the content based on the lessons, even if it takes some effort to apply them to new concepts) than 1 “hard” review (as in, it has words or grammar I haven’t been introduced to, yet.)

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