Yeah @amberglade I agree. Once you’ve gotten through all the points, it’s much better to just read like it’s going out of style. The more you read the more the points will naturally cement. Your brain knows when things are useful and when they’re not, so learning in a vacuum only gets you so far.
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Clearing everyday as best you can is definitely important. I was also getting around 100 reviews at that time, but I knew all of N4 and N5 mostly, so breezing through those left me with like 20 or 30 N3-N1 to deal with. Now of course it’s between 30-60 reviews per day which is pretty manageable. Just pick a daily routine and try it for a week. If it’s too much by the end, adjust your numbers. But do try to clear out your queue. It’s much easier to stick to a schedule when you hit zero every day
They come too often. I would like it to be more space between repetitions. Most SRS apps allow for this parameter to be specified/controlled.
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You’re presenting this as a success story but “breezing through” reviews means you’re paying an opportunity cost because of Bunpro’s poor SRS.
Just wanted to compliment the post title. Totally clickbaited me in here.
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Most reviews are too easy, i.e. the interval between two reviews was too short. This means that only a fraction of the time I spend doing reviews is useful, which is frustrating.
It was definitely written in a moment of high frustration. I do think the SRS could be vastly improved but I still love Bunpro and I think it’s a great tool for learning grammar.
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I’ve read this thread a couple times, and maybe I am just being daft but I’m having a tough time figuring out the core issue you seem to be having.
In general we take the approach of offering as much customization as possible to reviews so people can find what works for them so we are pretty flexible to making options. But without better understanding the fundamental issue, anything we implement will just be a shot in the dark.
So any extra information, especially concrete examples would be great. 
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^^^ if you think they’re coming too soon, increase their srs so they’re further apart.
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Yeah I agree. At the time it still didn’t hurt to at least make sure I was hitting all N5-N3 points, but if the spacing is too close for your liking you can change the SRS level in bulk to adjust it. Not sure what the ask is here other than perhaps a more sophisticated SRS algorithm?
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Would it be fair to say that, in general, the wish is for:
- The ability to customize the SRS intervals (i.e. the length of time between SRS stages)
- An automatic way for the SRS intervals to change based on review accuracy (e.g. if you keep on getting a card wrong, then automatically change the length of time until you next see that card, rather than following the usual SRS interval)
Feel free to correct if I’ve misunderstood 
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Agree with the idea of being able to manipulate a full SRS system for advanced users, but I think less people are capable of doing proper tweaking of any of the customization of SRS.
Most of the problems are with the learner themselves. It’s a bitter pill to swallow (and one I’ve had to take myself time and time again).
The amount of time it takes to fully understand SRS is better spent clearing your review queue.
I think it’d be better if Bunpro had a selection of methods and timings one could opt into so they didn’t have to learn how to learn. Leave it to the experts to create the experience of learning.
For example, a user could select from:
- How many times will you review a day? (1,2,3)
- What time(s) of the day can you review? (Morning, Afternoon, Evening)
- How long will you spend in a review session? (15 Minutes, 30m, 60m)
If a user selects 1, Evening, 15m then perhaps it starts with learning many items, but tapers off over time so that the review queue doesn’t exceed 20 items a day. An option to “review ahead” would follow traditional SRS timings, but the queue would otherwise only refresh daily.
Again… I believe that time making your own SRS is better spent clearing the review queue. Leave it to the pros… the bun-pros 
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I also love Bunpro, and the SRS is also my biggest complaint. I spend a LOT of time doing ghosts and other reviews outside of the SRS to try to boost my retention, which completely defeats the point of an SRS. And because some lessons are complex and lump together lots of different conjugations (like て form), you can get quite far in the SRS not knowing how to e.g. conjugate 〜いで, which the SRS will try to ameliorate by instead reinforcing って since that’s also part of the て lesson you failed. I end up failing lots of the later lessons that rely on those foundational grammar points I’ve supposedly passed, and then intentionally ghosting them for some remedial study of that earlier grammar point.
This makes Bunpro the least rewarding app I use for studying Japanese. SRS progress doesn’t feel “real” when you have to do so much studying outside of it (ghosts, extra drills, textbooks) to avoid high failure percentages on topics you’ve supposedly mastered, which makes gaining levels in the SRS not feel like an accomplishment.
The Bunpro devs are at least aware of it, though, and the app has still done more to motivate me to learn grammar than anything else I’ve tried, even if I wished the SRS worked better. Maybe these improvements could be prioritized soon?
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i find that im getting frustrated that the hints are misleading me and i end up failing. one sentence has a hint saying its Progressive, then i type in the answe and then a red hint at the bottom says its supposed to be in passive tense. or that i typew in the right answer (in this case it would be 通り) but i keep getting told im wrong, as the correct answer is…とおり… like i understand the grammar, but the hints are just screwing me over, so maybe i need to not read the hints? idk. but i am getting a bit frustrated with it.
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Answers must be in hiragana which can be frustrating if you’re used to type in japanese, but it’s helpful when you can’t install japanese keyboard on your laptop (eg: my work laptop).
as for the hints some people find them great, but in my case, I was frustrated too so I just ignore them, and when I’m in a synonym loop I switch to reading mode (especially when it comes to translate ‘I have to’ ‘I must do’.
Hope you’ll find a way to deal with hints that suits you !
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man, that type of stuff annoys me too. Why am I getting a “hint” after I’ve already screwed up? It’s too late for the hint!
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For those in synonym hell in this thread please give some love to this one I made with an example.
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Hi Jake, I know that your comment was in good faith but honestly it did feel a little big disingenuous; how could you have “a tough time figuring out the core issue you seem to be having” when my comment just before yours said:
Most reviews are too easy, i.e. the interval between two reviews was too short.
I’m not sure how to make this any clearer… Other users have also chimed in and expressed the same frustration. Some users have contributed with potential solutions (thank you! 
) which are unfortunately all very manual (I don’t want to manually adjust the SRS level of my cards).
@bunnypro has summarized what we wish for well. Below you can find the relevant setting on jpdb.io.
One last observation, and I’m not sure if there’s a setting to change this specifically, but having multiple cards for the same note (using Anki terminology) being reviewed in the same session doesn’t seem very effective. I would prefer to have max 1 card per note being reviewed in the same session or day.
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Thanks for the follow up! I apologize for not phrasing it better. I had simply meant within the context of the whole thread it was hard to figure out what the problem was because while you pointed out the intervals were too short, others were saying it was perfect as is and still others were saying the intervals were too long.
That to me spoke to a core issue that the comments about various interval lengths were just symptoms of. But at that point it wasn’t really clear what a solution would because we didn’t really know what the core issue was.
That screenshot really helps make it clear that the core issue is just wanting finer control over interval length and also gives a good visual of what the desired solution is. That will help a lot and shouldn’t be too tough of a change to implement.
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@GudGud07 @Buntebunpou @amberglade @bunnypro @hx9 @Zealot
Just thought I would follow up that we added an “Advanced Settings” option here: https://bunpro.jp/settings/reviews
The SRS Interval setting can be adjusted to shorten or lengthen the SRS interval. The little “See More” has a chart that lays out how each setting impacts the time where Default is our base numbers.
The change affects reviews going forward and doesn’t retroactively change existing reviews you have coming up.
We played around with a variety of numbers and looked at user data and these intervals are the ones we felt offered the best range without being either too impactful or not impactful enough.
As always, would be happy to hear it your feedback about the change and about your experience using it going forward!
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