How to practice "keywords" of grammar points

There is the cram feature that lets you practice as much as you want outside of the SRS. Would that be what you are looking for?

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Not exactly, in that case I have to select lessons I’m struggling with or I have select every lesson which is not great.

With this particular point, you’d have to identify everything that makes up the grammar point because if you try to brute-force memorize the hiragana, it’s going to make for a long journey. So we’d be able to break it up into the following の・が・上手 (じょうず) - the latter meaning “skillful”.

For grammar points that involve vocab words, I suppose you could add it to your SRS of choice like Bunpro, Anki, etc. For the other grammar sections, the new in-house write-ups should break down each part of what’s getting used. Before the write-ups, there was basically just the structure breaking things apart to show you what’s going on, but the team here did a good job at trying to explain everything so people wouldn’t have to memorize it all too much. There’s going to be some points where you’re confused about the make-up of everything; in that case, I would first recommend checking the community thread relating to the point (which can be found on the grammar page under ‘Ask a question’) and then if you’re still lost, just post a message there and someone for sure will answer your question.

Hope that helps!

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I’m not talking about vocabulary actually, sometimes I know how grammar works but simply don’t remember the “keyword/hiragana” part (I really don’t know what to call these). Part I need to enter to the answer field.

For example I’m at “must do/must not do” and “it’d be better” and these have really long “keywords/hiragana”. When I review them I see them like twice a day, at most and I feel like that’s not enough.

It’s a weird question, I’m not sure if I’m doing great job at explaining but basically I simply want to memorise things like “たほうがいい”, “ないほうがいい”. I guess only way would be creating custom Anki deck or something right now.

Note : This post contains my own opinions on the language learning process and what I have gathered from discussions with other language learners, don’t take this as gospel and do make your own way if you don’t agree with my points as it’s by no means the only way to fluency.


I’m not entirely sure, but based on your comments I take it that you are currently in the recognition stage (you can read and understand), but fail to get it up to production (actually using it yourself). If I’m right, sadly there is no good answer, and relying on an SRS exclusively for this will not properly work (at least in my opinion, though it is still a fantastic tool to get to production a lot faster). You need more exposure to the grammar points by reading / listening and need to attempt to actually use it when writing your own sentences to become fluent at it.

I might be missing your point though, in which case I apologize for misunderstanding.

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Are you talking about being able to type hiragana? Or are you talking about being able to read hiragana?

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I’m talking about remembering “keywords” of grammar points, “demoii” for example.

The hiragana you’re referring to are based off kanji, which is what the writeup explicitly states. If I remember correctly you said you didn’t want to learn kanji yeah?

I think I know what you’re trying to explain, but I would highly recommend not just memorizing the hiragana for a point and instead memorize how it’s broken down. You can still memorize just the hiragana for kanji like 方, but otherwise you’re going to make it way too hard on yourself imo. I suppose you could make a custom anki deck for it. But it feels like, again, this is just gonna continue to pile up super high in the future.

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You are missing my point but that’s my fault because even I can tell the question is not clear enough.

Let’s say I read “demoii” lesson, I know how to use it, when it comes up in reviews I remember the lesson, I remember how should I use it but I simply don’t remember “demoii” part, like maybe I think it is “tedaii” or “demeii”, something like that. “Demoii” is easy enough to remember but not all of them, just giving “demoii” as example.

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I’m thinking some practice saying the answer out loud would help. So maybe use the Cram feature, put 5-6 grammar points in Cram, and with each answer read the sentence out loud, so the sounds sink in while the meaning is fresh. Then later, when you’re doing reviews, you’re only thinking “is it でもいい or だろう?” as whole phrases rather than pieces.

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I know some of them are based on kanji, in the end many grammar stuff actually use hiragana that’s why I said hiragana.

I’m not sure what do you mean by how it’s broken down. Sure, grammar points sometimes have “this part means this, that part means that and when you combine two that means this” but most of the time you simply have to memorise, don’t you? For example:

Someone can correct me if im wrong but I believe that なくて means not and is the て form of ない. For ならない I remember it as the negative of なる. To get the whole thing I would put those together with は between them. If you translate it directly its “to not not do” or must do. This may help you remember the reading of the word. :slightly_smiling_face:

Having said that I think you should use cram or put it in anki to memorise these grammar points because they can take a while and as you said sometimes you just need to brute force them into your brain

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Your issue sounds sounds like the same one I had for years (and maybe others too); essentially I need to build a recognition base before productive output just to be able to extract the key item, particularly with grammar synonyms and literary based grammar. And certainly if I can’t recognize the grammar in pure reading, then I’m not at the level of producing it effectively.

This is why I posted this recently and have used recognition decks. I’m also of basis not all grammar points require the same type of exercise to help master or level used so the variety helps. Of course if you can master BunPro, then you are probably doing well but the ramp up can be too hard at times to get to that point.

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Having said that I think you should use cram or put it in anki to memorise these grammar points because they can take a while and as you said sometimes you just need to brute force them into your brain

I guess so. I hoped we had some easier way to do it, I guess not.

That seems like a good way to do it but I really don’t want to use another service, especially a paid service. I already use too many different ones, some on PC, some on tablet, some on phone, it’s all over the place.

I guess I will simply use cram feature.

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just make mnemonics bro

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This is one of the limitations of Bunpro in its current manifestation. In the past I’ve described it as too English-centric, but another way to say it would be it’s too focused on recall over against recognition. You need to practice recognition–e.g. seeing the flashcard ほうがいい and then trying to correctly remember what that means.

I’m sorry to say that Bunpro currenly doesn’t offer this feature. I personally use Anki for this purpose. It’s inconvenient and a lot of extra work, but I manually transcribe all Bunpro grammar points to Anki cards that are set for both recognition and recall, which means I have to answer both the front and back of cards. I find it better helps both understanding as well as production. I do this not only with grammar, but also vocabulary.

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I mean, that is vocabulary. 上手 (じょうず) is a word meaning skillful. If you’ve memorised that, you’re most of the way there to the grammar point you’re talking about. A lot of grammar is using auxiliary verbs to modify the main verb: なる and もらう and so on are vocabulary too.

Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, recall is harder than recognition, and I find my accuracy percentage is a lot lower on Bunpro compared to WK or Anki, but don’t believe that memorising grammar points is fundamentally different from memorising vocabulary. がんばって!

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I was going to recommend exactly this. Usually when you can remember something but not exactly how it’s said, then actually outputting it can help a lot to remember.

I do this with almost every new kanji I learn, really exaggerating each mora.

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So in the end no easy way to do it, it seems.

You could use Anki but that’s a lot of work like @wrt7MameLZE33wlmpCAV said because it’s not only single word/meaning like it is with vocabulary, grammar points have extra rules and they change.

You also could cram, which I think I will be doing. That’s not perfect either because if you select like 4 grammar points, you will see the same thing over and over again, I’m not sure if that would be very helpful.

I wish we could add grammar points to “troubled grammar” list.