I'm drowning in synonyms

Bunpro
#1

しないといけない。しなくてはいけない。しなくてはならない。しなければいけない。しなければならない。しなきゃいけない。せねばならない。

I understand this has been a Bunpro problem discussed here before, but it’s really starting to wear me down in the last portions of material. I love Bunpro. I think it’s the most effective study tool I’ve ever used, even having previously taken a couple years of classes, and I think it’s because of what I’ve learned on here that I can understand real Japanese at all. But when I know how to express anything that I need in order to fill in a blank, but I can never get it right because I have to cycle through all of the possible options I know before eventually giving up and seeing that it was the last one I didn’t think of, I lose the will to keep trying at those prompts, and eventually just don’t get through all of my reviews. And when I don’t get through all of my reviews, I don’t get to my lessons to avoid growing the stack, and so my grammar learning stagnates.

Am I just holding it wrong? Most synonyms (but not all, in my experience) will trigger a warning telling me to be more or less formal, more or less nuanced, or just the nebulous something-else. Based on this I feel like I should be able to hone in on the right answers, but after fighting with it for a couple years I feel like even if I understand formality and nuance, I still can’t pick the right one. I regularly go back and read the entries for these grammar points after hitting a problem like this to try and drill into my head which one means “more nuanced,” but usually I either can’t figure out the comparative difference, or it just doesn’t stick for next time.

And, if it’s not me and this is a problem with spaced repetition for grammar, are there any solutions? I’ve been experimenting with creating my own SRS tools to bring the things I love from Bunpro to other languages, but I worry that in the process I’m going to create the same problems. I’m curious to know if anyone else has thought about this.

That’s my gripe. I’d love to know if either I can be doing something different, or if there is a future path out of this problem for SRS content creators.

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#2

Personally, I just switched to reveal and grade study mode on all my decks and that solved this issue for me.

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#3

I think this is definitely a realistic solution. The reason I haven’t done it is, I suspect the default write-in behavior is better for memory retention. I don’t have any hard studies backing this, but based on previous research into language learning like the tendency to retain things better when hand-written, I think it’s not unrealistic that the act of having to manually input answers probably helps with learning faster. I also sometimes worry that I don’t have the willpower to not cheat with it. Would I have really have ever thought of the answer that was expected? It’s hard to say; even if I understand it when I see it, that doesn’t necessarily mean I have the right recall, which is hard to judge when it’s so loaded.

#4

I’ll be honest, I occasionally cheat. Usually its just accidentally. As in I accidentally too hastily click the ‘2’ key and pass the card. Its probably less good for memory retention, but I’m not using bunpro to get good at production. Its just not frequent enough to really improve my speaking, and I don’t care that much about writing, since I can just always cheat when I ｗrite. I’m mostly concerned with quickly improving my reading comprehension and mastering grammar patterns that I see. The key thing with the reveal and grade though, is that you have to quiz yourself on the specific grammar not the whole sentence. I misunderstand sentences all the time when I’m quizzing, but I answer the grammar point correctly. That’s what works for me. I think a better solution is probably possible, but I think doing all my reviews and new cards with reveal and grade is better than not wanting to do my reviews because they got too 面倒くさい

Edit: Actually this brings up something. It may exist, but I can’t find it. I’d really love an undo feature. I know I can undo after I answer, but I can’t undo after I switch to the next item. So when I accidentally pass, I can’t go back and undo it.

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#5

These were fun, I remember them.
I’ve never personally used them in my 3 years of living in japan, but you never know.

Basically it comes down to ないと and なくてはない as well as ば there’s a list somewhere on bunpro about the formalities of it all, but honestly you’re not going to need to remember anything more than a basic しないといけない in 99% of the situations you find yourself in. even then most of the time you’ll just say しなきゃ. lol

If you’re struggling with these points in particular, you can set certain points to be reading comprehension while leaving all the other reviews as fill-in style questions.

Overall I wouldn’t worry too much about being able to replicate these words (at least in my experience) but just be able to read and understand them for now and later on maybe they’ll click.

As for this style of issue in SRS and language learning in general, no matter what you’re going to run into them. The best idea is to shrug and say “I guess that’s how it is.” you don’t ask yourself why we say “that’s half-way around the world!” when “that’s 25,000 kilometers away!” means the same thing. or why we put timing (tomorrow, ect.) first in some instances and others we say it last. There’s no real meaning to it other than it feels right in the circumstances, and sometimes that’s just how language is.

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#6

Solution 1) If you toggle the hint (the lil sentence that comes up in grey), it immediately clarifies which point you should be using (usually by declaring its politeness level for points like these). Even back when I used fill-in, I never struggled with any of these points.

Solution 2) I recommend just switching to reading mode for the grammar points. You’ll retain it all a lot better and you won’t have to worry about this issue at all.

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#7

I should clarify, it’s not necessarily just this cluster (although they might be the biggest wall), but that there’s a lot of groups of incredibly similar grammar points across the entire set. I do take a lot of value in knowing about all of them, but when sticking hard to the write-in process the tendency to trigger synonyms blocking answers gets taxing quickly. I don’t think it’s possible to implement without effectively having “spoilers” for answers, which wouldn’t be good, but I think the only answer I can hypothetically propose is less ambiguous hinting on synonyms.

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#8

Ambiguity in learning is important.

Yeah, there are quite a few strange grammar points out there like だが、逆に、したし、 and stuff, but it’s not so much as fully memorizing grammar, it’s more about understanding what it means even if you don’t fully understand the concept of the idea of the grammar point.

Personally, I’ve effectively stopped studying grammar after half of N2, and I’m able to understand nearly every grammar point I come across. A lot of grammar just comes with time and exposure moreso than outright study. (honestly it feels more and more true with language every day) God knows there’s at least 50 grammar points I’ve given up on then just learned over time naturally. (逆に, thanks Doctor Stone for always using it.)

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#9

I feel like I’m dropping off around the right point then, at least. I haven’t cared so much if I’m missing my reviews and lessons at this point because I can already understand so much, and I use the language every day. I haven’t had much urgency to learn more obscure ways to say “if”, since they’re all pretty intuitively familiar by now anyway.

#10

I’m torn on this, myself.

On one hand I’m much the same in that I’d like to build up my comprehension first and foremost, so that I can understand written (or spoken) Japanese more so than outputting the language myself - so I switched all my reviews including grammar to Reveal & Grade a while back.

On the other hand, I’d still like to get better at output and production at some point too - but I switched grammar reviews back to fill-in a couple days ago and watching my review queue explode because of missed grammar reviews was immediately demoralizing lol
Certainly, doing all of N4 and N3 in Reveal & Grade then switching them to Fill In didn’t help… but y’know.

Perhaps sticking with Reveal & Grade for everything and finding some other way to output and practice the language would be better…

#11

I’m also trying to find an effective way to output. I live in Japan, and just always speak in short simple sentences because even though I can often understand what I hear, I just can’t bring these sort of sentence structures to mind when I speak.

#12

Do you mean that in grammar reviews, you’re being marked as incorrect for giving an answer like 〜しなければいけない rather than 〜しなきゃいけない ? I only have experience with N1 grammar reviews and those typically allow a variety of similar forms as viable correct answers.

If I were you I would just either mark those items to be skipped in reviews, or when you give an answer, if the “correct” answer is simply a synonym, mark it as correct and move on.

I think real input from native sources will be more useful for developing your intuition as to what form is most appropriate in what situation than trying to remember a bunch of rules in English about how to use another language. Not to mention people have individual speaking styles, dialects exist, different forms can be used for effect at different times etc. All of that actual language usage is much more nebulous than what a description can accomplish, so I would recommend not getting hung up on whether or not the app says you’re right or not.

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