I did a thing

Bunpro
#1

So, sheer curiosity, I checked out MaruMori (I’m about to finish up N3 in a few weeks so no use for me really) but either way, how could people prefer this over a bunpro/WK combination? MaruMori’s Kanji was dreadful, and their reviews weren’t anymore helpful than here. I admit, they may go into some more depth on some grammar which I appreciated, but what’s with the craze over this platform? I am new here, but the professional aesthetic, clear goals set out each day, whats up with people lol ??? grass is greener attitude?

Now thats not to say this is perfect, but at least if you grasp everything (no cheating fellas) here you’re 75-80% there

Btw, I am not associated with Bunpro, just a kid trying to take N1 in a year or two…

As an aside, HATED the childish layout

(continuing to throw compliments in the developer’s faces here…which a PM with access to a mobile beta would not go unappreciated…im always on the go…

…)

8 Likes
#2

Different strokes for different folks. There is definitely a subset of Japanese learners that are into that type of UI. I personally think it looks quite nice at an initial glance but would probably drive me crazy if I had to look it it every day.

At the end of the day though, it doesn’t really matter what tool or approach you choose to learn as long as it is something you stick to because every tool is only valuable if you actually use it. Not only that but everyone’s learning journey evolves and what worked for you at N5 might not work at N2.

If someone tries Bunpro and doesn’t feel like it is working for them, I would 100% encourage them to try something else and to maybe come back to Bunpro in the future and give it another try and see.

11 Likes
#3

I’ve had a go at it when it was only until N4 (no use for me either, just out of curiosity), and I can see the appeal – it does hold your hand more than WK/bunpro does, which can be quite nice in the beginning. It’s easy to feel lost or burned out when all you’re doing is drilling kanji/grammar, and I can see games/lighter sidequests helping with that. Also somewhat cheaper than wk/bp combo, could matter for non-western countries.

Plus if they actually implement everything on their roadmap (eg. full mock exams, vocab mining plugins, etc.), it’s a damn complete package. Even if I do enjoy having multiple resources for studying, having it all in one place is a huge help for a lot of people.

Craze wise, any new tool is going to be overhyped, especially if it tries to pull gamified users from duolingo. I think the UI’s cute too, I don’t care for it but it doesn’t bother me either.

2 Likes
#4

I’ve never used or even heard of MaruMori. So I don’t understand what you mean by this. Is the teaching order illogical, or is the accompanying teaching text lacking in information?

1 Like
#5

As a software engineer, that’s kind of a problem with all software made today. They don’t take the “expert user” into account. Onboarding has never been smoother, but using an app daily is kind of dreadful sometimes.

4 Likes
#6

So it just links the combined kanji to vocabulary, rarely gives a reading for individual kanji, doesn’t really take the WK/RTK approach which has been so crucial to me - so basically see this kanji? look at it - here’s the vocab

instead of teaching individual readings on/kun so you can even start to recognize ones you don’t know - so yeah lacking info

2 Likes
#7

@Jake @ddavo

(1) Bunpro putting in effort to their N2 and N1 is crucial to me, I am about to depart from N3 in a few weeks - and its obvious that there are less N2-N1ers (even N3ers) so from a business standpoint its less

3 Likes
#8

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, even though you probably didn’t mean to. The website does look kind of childish, like something you’d use to teach a baby the alphabet or something. I haven’t used it before, but according to you guys, it’s terrible at teaching kanji and is just trying to sweep Duolingo users (not specifically them, but people who like the game format) to their platform. I probably would have come across this, fell for the trap (as a former Duolingo user) and got lost and frustrated. So it looks like doing your “thing” kinda helped me. :purple_heart: :purple_heart: :purple_heart: :purple_heart: :purple_heart: :purple_heart:

1 Like
#9

I checked it out with the N3 level. it’s really confusing how it is set up. I think if you start with it, like from a N5 level, it may be pretty decent but I feel we definitely aren’t the target audience. it is definitely more focused on new learners who are intimidated by the big scary kanji and hiragana on the background of Bunpro’s onboarding page.

#10

Well to be fair, I feel like there’s a place to be taken for a fun and gamified app that would also be actually at least decent at teaching Japanese. I personally would have loved to be able to stick with Duo, because my days are exhausting and my time limited so I really enjoyed to be spoonfed and encouraged to practice daily the way they do. Too bad the actual content and learning method are so terrible.

#11

I used duolingo for the first 8 months of studying and to be honest it was fine for me, its just that at a certain point I realized it was going to slow for me (learning only a couple words every 4 days or so) so I switched to bunpro. I think duolingo is good for starters, specially because it constantly makes you repeat basic things so that they really stick to your brain.

#12

I agree. Sometimes there wasn’t anything new to learn (which I guess occasionally helped with repetition and retention), and it got boring. Also, the teaching method was so bad that the only things I could say in Japanese were すし、みず、and こんいちわ. I even kept a notebook, but it was the teaching that was failing me. It was the reason I gave up Japanese somewhere in 2024 until December 29th 2024

#13

I think that’s the first “section?” of dulingo. I have to say this, its designed by having levels (“short lessons”) that take 2 minutes to complete, so when I was slacking off I’d just do one lesson per day which got me stuck. To somewhat progress you gotta do at least 8 per day.
My sister recently started learning Japanese though dulongo and I see her doing that same thing (stuck in tea and rice).

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#14

Maybe that’s it. I didn’t have all the time in the world to do much, but I thought things would stick better what with all the hype.

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#15

I’ve heard it has romaji furigana everywhere, can you turn it off?
Also, I understood that it spends a lot of time (while trying to check checking answers). I’ve been saying that duo is ok because it has repetition and different things, but after I’ve watched livikivi’s last video about duo I got that it’s not workable as I thought.

Duo it’s not particularly a bad thing, as I though watching another YouTube [video](https://youtu.be/KdtSLR-5i7U?feature=shared yesterday

1 Like
#16

Well, no one asked, I’m sorry

1 Like
#17

Yes there’s a switch for that in the app’s settings.

3 Likes