Now I want to start, can somebody give me some tips how I reach my goal to speak Japanese. i know all Hira and Kata already. how much vocab do you learn each day… and how much grammar?
does everybody now how I can change my profile picture in bunpro?
Hi, and welcome! For changing your profile pic on Bunpro itself (ie not this forum): What is My Gravatar?
Depends on who’s answering, you are going to get a really wide range of answers. It’s probably safer to start low and ramp up after a month or so, versus starting too high, because burning out when you have too many reviews to tackle everyday is a real risk.
Maybe think about how long you are willing to spend on reviews everyday, and if you have any concrete goals in the short/medium term (JLPTs etc), and work backwards from there? Which review type are you going to use? Fill-in takes more time than reading, I think, and if you are planning to handwrite your answers for kanji practice that will take even more time.
I’m also not sure how you are going to bridge your goal to speak Japanese with Bunpro - not that Bunpro is useless for speaking, but you definitely need some speaking (and listening) practice that’s not available on here. Just something to think about.
Personally, I’m doing 10 vocab (reading mode) + 1 grammar (fill-in mode) points per day now, with most of the vocab mined from books I’m reading. It takes me about an hour a day to clear my ~200 reviews, which is a pretty huge time suck. My goal is to reach ~9K cards this year so that I can read with more ease - your final vocab goals might be different if you are looking to be conversational instead.
(It’s also probably better to go slow on grammar at the start - I found N5/N4 grammar points harder than N3 onwards, because it was difficult to wrap my head around basic conjugation rules, the concept of particles etc. I remember literally crying over my passive, causative and passive-causative tables because I kept mixing them up :/)
Welcome Pascal!
Don’t be greedy with grammar and vocab or you will pile up review quickly and might end up burning out.
5 vocab and 1 grammar point a day for at least 2 weeks is a good start (I personaly do all of them as fill in)
Then slowly increase it if you still have more time daily to invest in bunpro.
Learning a language is a marathon not a sprint, it will take you years.
If you want to try out some japanese reading already check out level s and 0 of tadoku graded reader
, those books are free and aimed at children and people learning japanese.
If you prefer videos, there are hundreds of free comprehensive input video for beginners or N5 on youtube, you can also check out the free video on comprehensible japanese.
Welcome! I have been “attempting” to learn off and on for the last 5 years, but this year I actually committed to the learning process and got far more diligent.
I initially typed out a detailed review of my journey this year, but it quickly turned into a wall of text that I removed for the sake of brevity. (Yes, this is the shortened version believe it or not)
I’m currently using WaniKani for Vocab and Bunpro for Grammar and additional vocab, so I’m doubled up on training materials.
I found that in my case it was far less about the number of new items per day, and far more about routine and diligence in review-queue management. I started at the beginning of the year and burnt out in March/April. I managed to make a decently quick recovery from which I learned a lot.
Now I aim for small batches of reviews multiple times per day, and I’m very mindful of not letting them pile up into big lumps. On days where I know I’ll be busy, I rarely take on new lessons unless I have a very small review queue. I aim for review batches no more than 40-50 items total between the two websites (20 per website), and no more than 250 total reviews per day. My target is a total of 100 reviews per website per day, and I use lessons to fill in when I’m below that.
Below is a screenshot of the stats for reviews and new items for this year. You can really see where I was taking on a fair bit in February and it all caught up to me by March. I found that I really struggled with taking on new grammar points especially, so let those settle in before you take on too much.
If you, or anyone else, wants to discuss more about my routine, burnout, or recovery, I’m happy to discuss over PM, but I’m trying to avoid a huge chunk of text as much as I can. I can easily get verbose.
Hi Pascal
It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
The best thing to do is to accept it’ll take time.
The second thing is to find a pace that is sustainable to you. There’s no “how much per day” needed, there’s just as much as you can manage while having fun.
I wrote a little rant about motivation spikes and expectations around my 1-year JP learning mark
After some trial and error, my approach has been to do one JLPT level at a time starting with N5 grammar and vocabulary. I’m a good way into N4 right now and I’ve been using BunPro for about a year.
Generally speaking you’ll have 10-15x the number of reviews over a long period on Bunpro than the amount you’re adding in daily. Add 3 a day, and you’ll get 30-45 daily. I take around 1 hour to clear 100 reviews whether it’s Fill-In or Reading.
Vocab and kanji are super valuable to build up. You can never know too much vocab, so even if something is not a beginner level it’s not harmful to learn it. If you’re stuck on a piece of vocab/kanji/grammar then don’t be afraid to stop reviewing it and return to it later. For learning vocab I really love the Reading type of flashcards. Seeing a word in a sentence is a lot easier to understand the nuance than through a definition.
Welcome and well met, PascalFriedrich! I have been learning Japanese for about a year, so I was recently where you were! Here’s what I found useful on my first year of Japanese learning, and some of the stuff I wish I had known back then:
As a new learner, I’d recommend you try to tackle somewhere around 40 vocabs per week and grammar is going to depend on pacing, but as a new learner somewhere between 1-3 grammars per day should be your limit. Some people catch on to grammar rules fast, in which case 3 is ok, but more methodically paced learners or learners with a high risk of burnout should stick to 1.
As you move up the N levels, you can realistically increase your vocab and grammar load since as you improve it’ll turn more into a “OH! So THIS is how this grammar fits into the picture.” instead of a “Where does the subject go again?” type situation.
Grammar is the trickiest.
I’d recommend a limit of 3 per day starting with the N5 deck.
For an extra resource I found the book “Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar” invaluable. The lessons are very digestible and it doesn’t feel like reading a textbook. The author even put his entire work online for free.
Link to book: link
Bunpro also has a custom grammar deck that follows the book: link to deck
For vocab try starting out with 3-6 per day. I’d highly recommend looking into the book “Remembering the Kanji” it will help a lot in the long run.
Or if you aren’t afraid of another paid service, I’ve been using the website “wanikani” in conjunction with Bunpro for awhile now. You can even directly link your WaniKani progress to Bunpro in your account settings.
I’ll admit that once the initial rush of picking up the easy grammar and vocab wears off, it really starts to feel like an unfun grind. But when you begin consuming native content, like books, light novels, news articles, or whatever and you suddenly spot grammar points or words you’ve studied before, that “aha” moment is pure dopamine.
Pick a goal and pick a deadline (I went for N4 in one year, N3 after two years)
Ask chatgpt to convert that to daily lesson numbers based on that schedule: “How many bunpro vocab and grammar lessons do I need to do per weekday to achieve a goal of … level by … timeframe? I have … amount of time in the morning before work, is this achievable?”
Remember you’ll also have to get kanji practice in somewhere (and immersion after ~N4) so it really will take time - Bunpro makes it very easy to burn through grammar when really you can get away with being much slower, I finished N2 grammar recently but I’m still only just finishing N3 kanji and vocab.
TL;DR start slow, work up to comfort level, use LLMs to suggest benchmark lesson numbers
For me i find 10 vocab and 2 grammer per day works fine.
and i keep adding everyday but i stop adding new item on days where my accuracy of the past 24 hours is below 80%
i feel that makes me slow down when things get tough and prevents me from burning out. also prevents me from getting a mountain of ghosts as well
If you don’t know your limit and are just starting I would go as fast as you can.
Then you’ll quickly find the amount which you find uncomfortable / tedious. After that tone it down to a pace you enjoy / can handle.
A big part of language learning, is learning how you would like to learn.
Sounds dumb, but some go as fast as they can to immerse faster, others might not like ambiguity or feeling overloaded and have a need or want to go slower.
honestly I would just start slow, and go from there, only you know you.
This is very true. Don’t be afraid to experiment with prioritising different methods.
Ultimately have fun and stay motivated.
Just a side-note, your avatar is the cutest on here, tuxedo cat supremacy! 
KiyoKatu, how did you generate that graph of your reviews? Is that a Bunpro feature?
It is! It took me a while to find it, but if you got to your profile, in the section where it shows your JLPT progress, there’s a “-> Stats” link in the upper right, which further breaks down all kinds of stats from your Bunpro journey. I only found it because WaniKani has similar features that you can add to your dashboard and I was specifically looking for similar data here on Bunpro.
There’s lots of cute and awesome profile pictures on here, yours included
Unfortunately I am not a cute tuxedo cat, and the cat is the venerable Uni who can be found prowling on Instagram.
My Opinionated, and Highly Recommended Prioritization for Self-Study
5a) Immersion with the intent to learn, modern mining techniques
5b) Learn grammar/vocab through N1
If you don’t finish #1 during your study time, don’t move on to #2 etc.
Once you finish studying through N4, getting immersion activities becomes higher priority. Once you finish N2, you should do immersion and enjoy the fruits of your learning while continuing to clear your queue.
