How to properly grade Reveal & Grade reviews

Bunpro
#1

Hey there,

Coming from Wanikani for some months before Bunpro I’m used to the manual type of answer wherein you have to fully write out the answer/reading/translation.
That said, I wanted to give Reveal & Grade a try but I wasn’t sure how best to use it. Do you grade yourself based on purely based on whether you understand the part highlighted in blue (be it vocab or grammar) rather than the full sentence?

Let’s say for example that my review is the following: 心理カウンセラーに苦しい胸の内を明かしたらスッキリしました。With 内 being highlighted in blue. Should I grade it as good if I understand that it means inner/inside/within, even if I don’t grasp the full example sentence?
Similarly for a grammar review like B：「アニメといえばドラグーンボールの新しいシーズンが放送されているね。」
Should I try to fully grasp the sentence and grade based on that, should I strictly look at whether I understand the highlighted part and “ignore” the rest (as in, not get hung up on whether I understand the rest or not)?

#2

I only use reveal & grade for vocab, and the standard I use is that I should understand the exact meaning as well as the reading of the highlighted word in the context of that specific sentence, but I allow myself to look up any other word in the sentence if necessary, which I use Yomitan for. I don’t require myself to understand the entire sentence (though I usually do after looking up other unknown words) as long as I get the correct nuance of the highlighted word.

5 Likes
#3

I come from Jalup which uses reveal and grade. This is how I do It
心理カウンセラーに苦しい胸の内 を明かしたらスッキリしました。
内 is ない , 外 の反対語 (antonym)
OK I know that one, flip it over. If my meaning and reading are correct All set!
However
[アニメといえば ドラグーンボールの新しいシーズンが放送されているね。」
といえば, uh… something like (reads sentence) yeah, ‘An anime like dragonball’ makes sense. 放送 looks like a release from the kanji.

As in the sentence is supposed to make vocab easier- not harder
Edit: oops, got that one wrong. That would be a ×

#4

With production questions + manual input answers, what trips me the most (in a good way) are similar expressions with different meaning or different usage. For example 以上・以上に. Or 内に・間に・ところに. Or 100 variations of よう and そう.

If I were to use recognition questions + reveal and grade answers, I have a feeling I would glance over a lot of these issues without even realizing it.

So I guess I would want to grade myself not only on “how is the highlighted expression typically translated to English”, but also on “can it be replaced with any other grammar/expression, and how would that change the meaning”. But the back of the card only has 1 English translation so…

3 Likes
#5

Personally I grade based on how confidently I got it right. This includes properly understanding how its being used in the example’s context. As someone stated already- if you lack vocab knowledge I feel its fine if you look up the words via Nazeka, Yomichan, Rikai (you name it…), as long as you dont use that on the tested grammar bit of course… And if you wanna train your comprehension its still best to look up as little as possible.

In the extreme case you understand 0 words and only the isolated grammar term I would probably rate it as hard simply to see more exposure/examples of this. It can be quite easy to think you know something but only once you look at it as part of the whole sentence you have it “click”.

3 Likes
#6

They key here is that Reveal & Grade is meant as a faster alternative to manual answer when progressing through each stage.

Even though typing it out is better for retention, R&G allows you to go through a higher volume of content, so it’s typically better for Vocab (since vocab words rely mainly on memory and are big in number) and Grammar you’ve already studied elsewhere and you just want to brush up on it. This, to me, is its best use case.

As to judging your own level on something to grade it, I’d say being able to glance at it and being able to tell what the meaning is without too much effort would be good enough for a pass for me. Then again, this is very personal.

3 Likes
#7

Another advantage of reveal & grade is that you can test for comprehending meaning and reading at the same time, which no other mode allows for currently.

1 Like
#8

Thanks for all your answers everyone. :slightly_smiling_face: It about confirms what I thought was the case but it’s good to have confirmation.
I’ll continue experimenting with the different types of reviews and see what suits me the best, my current goal being to build a solid foundation of understanding before any real output studies/work.