How to memorize the words?

[maritberre]

Hi,

I am wondering how to get more out of this program. Every day I do the lessons and reviews on my phone, and for every word (97%), I just write something, to see the answer, and then I spell in the answer, sometimes I take a few tries to spell it correctly. I don’t feel I’m learning or understanding much. I wanted to ask to see if anyone has tips for me how to learn more effectively. When I learn something on DuoLingo, it’s slow progress, but i feel that once I know it, it sticks (since it’s very repetitive). In this tool I feel very lost. Any tips? Thanks.

[lunchbox1]

If you’re just writing the answer after you see it, you aren’t using the program correctly. It’s an SRS system. It’s meant to be treated like flashcards. If you get it wrong, don’t just immediately type in the correct answer. Let it cycle through and try again once it reappears. If you keep getting it wrong, it won’t move up into a new SRS bracket (and it might even become a ghost). Trust me. This program is extremely repetitive and it will stick if you’re using it correctly.

P.s. stop Duolingo while you’re ahead.

[MurasakiChou]

It depends on how you use Bunpro so far.
E.g. do you try to brute force the vocab into your brain or try to make mnemonics, playing with the sound and meaning of the words?
Do you give yourself enough time while going through the lessons and looking at the vocab?

Besides that, you could change some things up, if you don’t do it already:
You could change the review style to just reading and self-grading instead of typing, that takes the pressure of outputting off your shoulders if you’re not ready for that yet.

For this setting, you first have to click on “reveal & grade” to then be able to click on “reading”.
(You may have to change it in the lesson and review options on the top left too, as you can read in the screenshot)

Then you can use the cram sessions for additional reviews. Click on “Practice” on the top right in your dashboard so see the option in the drop-down-menu.

You can also change your settings to create ghosts or be stricter regarding falling back to previous SRS-levels when failing to get more reviews of troubling items.
And finally, you can change the SRS interval a bit to slow down or speed up the reviews.

I’m certain, there are many more things you could try. For example, manually writing the vocab down on a piece of paper (or pen tablet, white board, whatever) while learning and reviewing to involve as many senses as possible your brain can use to build connections. Repeatedly listen and parroting the pronunciation might help, too.
You can also try to reduce the amount of new items, even if it seems you progress slower in the beginning. 5-10 new vocabs per day is a good amount to start, I’d say.
Don’t know if it already helps, but you can also listen to Japanese. Even though you will not understand a word, you might pick up words you just learned. It also trains your ear for the rhythm and sounds of the language. On Youtube there are several channels for beginners from natives. Just enter “comperehensible japanese” into the Youtube searchbar and you’ll get several entries. I highly recommend a channel with exact that name. They do have a playlist of their videos for complete beginners, so even if you don’t know many words, you’ll see and hear them in context and might pick up words Bunpro haven’t taught you yet.

In the end, let the SRS do its thing and give your brain time to build new synapses.

The beginning may be a bit tough, but the more one learns, the easier it gets - at least that’s how I experience it so far.

Edit: As @lunchbox1 said - stop Duolingo for a while. And be honest with your review fails. If you don’t know the answer, fail the item to get more reviews of it.

[Chimmsen]

You seem to be in the beginning of your japanese journey, right? Your brain doesn’t have a concept of how japanese words and sentences are build yet, so naturally it’s still very hard! It will get easier once your brain has settled in and became used to japanese. But that takes a while. So don’t be discouraged just yet.

So what can you do until then?

I’m also on team read, reveal and grade. Seeing words in context and additional repeating other words and grammar points in the same sentence will help your brain getting used to japanese faster.

Take it slow. I don’t know how many vocab and grammar points a day you’re going for, but maybe scale it a bit down. Review the vocab for the day or week a few times a day with for example with the cram function or your own notes and sentences you’ve written.Just five minutes here or there, whenever you have a natural pause or a bit extra time on your hands.

Don’t feel ashamed to make the most ridiculous mnemonics you can think of. Spending this time will help you making those first words stick better.

While immersion like reading a manga or watching anime with japanese subtitles is probably still a long time for you, think about light immersion, just to help your brain out a bit.

Duolingo is actually great for that! You get a few sentences with high repetition of words and grammar and they always read the sentences aloud for you, so your brain gets reading, listening and meaning in one go. While you can’t expect to become fluent in japanese using only duo, it’s a nice addition especially for light immersion in the beginning. If you haven’t deactivated romaji yet, you really should, so you get used faster to hiragana and katakana. The free version is more than enough for that.

If you enjoy watching anime and you haven’t done so yet, I would suggest switching to japanese audio with subtitles in your preferred language. Not only is the voice acting best, but you can get a happiness rush everytime you recognize a word or even a whole sentence! Sometimes you even start to recognize words you haven’t learned yet. Sometimes you get a vague sense of a word or grammar point, but it only clicks if you get it here in the reviews. All those are positive learning experiences, guiding your brain slowly to get used to japanese.

If you are more the grinder type of person or want to see faster results, I suggest trying your hands on a textbook like genki. Older version of genki are oftentimes found in (online) libraries, so access is easy and free, and bunpro also has a path for genki and other textbooks.

With learning japanese, there are basically just to big hurdles to overcome: first the beginning until you have basics down and second to keep going even if your motivation wanes.

Good luck, you can do it!

[maritberre]

Thanks for the helpful response. It sounds like my expectations were too high, in that I had assumed that the SRS would remember the fact that the first attempt to respond was incorrect. Perhaps creating real paper flashcards is a better idea, before doing the Bunpro review. For me, it’s difficult to remember the spelling even when I try to type it in just after seeing the correct answer, so no matter how many times the question is repeated, I don’t see myself making progress, unless I try just after seeing it. Thanks again.

[maritberre]

Thank you so much for all the helpful tips and the detailed screenshots! I think taking more time is a very good advice for now.

[maritberre]

@Chimmsen

deactivated romaji

Thank you so much for the helpful tip about deactivating romaji. I didn’t know that this was possible! I agree that duolingo is not great by itself, but it’s helped me learn how to write quite well, as it really drills it in.

[KurokawaMasumi]

What I do personally is that I do what you did, in terms of rewriting until I get it right, but then I backspace again and give it a purposefully wrong answer so it knows to mark it wrong.

I think that’s probably the better approach, and it’s been working for me so far, specially since they sometimes become ghost reviews and you get to really reinforce that entry.

If I still get an entry wrong, I take a few minutes to study it extensively (look up the etymology for example, or now that I have a tutor and I’m still a bit confused by it I write it down for later and then ask them about it).

Also what you can do is, when you’re in the summary of your sessions, you can go check the reviews you got wrong in the last 24 hours and make a cram session out of them.

You spend a little more time on Bunpro but it’s very much worth it I’d say.

[FubuMiOkaKoro]

If you don’t have a Duolingo subscription you should create your own Japanese classroom on Duolingo and add yourself to the class as a student. This will give you unlimited hearts without having to pay money for it.

[zerohbeat]

For words / kanji, while doing reviews from time to time, when I get something wrong, I would write the answer on a piece of scrap paper. Eg 冷たい (つめたい ) cold
After I would just go through everything that I got wrong and re view this paper one last time after eg 1 hour or so and bin it.
Supposedly for some people writing things down with a pen / pencil a few times helps with memorisation.

[btluppi]

@maritberre

I had assumed that the SRS would remember the fact that the first attempt to respond was incorrect

Bunpro allows you to correct the answer if you so choose and I think it is helpful because sometimes it may just be a typo. Getting something marked as wrong because of a typo is extremely frustrating. But if you actually do not now the answer, yes, “accept” the mistake and move to the next item without retyping the answer so that the SRS level does not move up until it is actually supposed to.

@maritberre

For me, it’s difficult to remember the spelling even when I try to type it in just after seeing the correct answer

This should get easier as you learn more because you will start to see patterns. But for words that I think I will have trouble memorizing, I often throw it on ChatGPT and ask for a mnemonic:

If I don’t like it, I ask for a better one:

Then, ask for a short story to make it stick:

Sometimes I can’t find a good mnemonic. But other times it gives very good ones. Over time you start to recall the word without needing to think of the mnemonic