TLDR: Just a complete whinge-post.
I’m in such a slump with BunPro at the moment. I’ve a big stack of reviews. Success rate is around 50%. I’m just churning out ghost after ghost on N4 reviews, especially all the variants of ‘like’ (そう、よう、みえる、みたい)
Fed up, it is literally zero fun. It’s just not sticking in my memory.
This is definitely one of the weaker points of BunPro, imo. Great site overall, and wouldn’t want to be without it, but I am also struggling to tell close variants like these apart. I would really like to have some sort of better explanation of the differences, improved hints or something to make them easier to tell apart.
Yes, been there, done that, ended up there again, many times over. I do agree that explanations sometimes can be a bit lacking and doing reviews over and over and over again, always getting them wrong is very frustrating.
In the end, I realized that instead of learning the grammar point, i just memorized which grammar point that belongs to which sentence, which is counter productive.
My tip to you is to try to change how you measure your progress, or success. Instead of aiming to take care of many reviews, take on a smaller amount and try to translate each sentence. See how correctly you can translate the surrounding text, instead of focusing entierly on the current grammar point. Spend more time at resources like maggie sensei and put more appreciation in the moments when you understanding small nuance differences in the explanations. Whilst you only might get the “aha, I might understand this!” feeling once every two days or less, I still bet it will be more often than you feel right now.
It might take some time, but its how I got out some of those synonym hells.
Then again, Its easier to give advice than to follow them yourself
cough cough
It might be worth resetting certain grammar points and then slowly re-adding them over time, if they just aren’t sticking. Get some immersion in and the problems will clear themselves up. Look at the extra resources linked in the Bunpro lessons. ctrl+f whatever you are reading at the moment and search for any niggling points. I personally like using Bunpro to cover things that I already know/have some familiarity with from immersion so my success rate is 95%+. It makes reviews much easier and I am happy to take on new ghosts as I know it means I genuinely was missing something for that grammar point.
Different people like to do things differently but I would certainly not be enjoying myself in your position either so…
thanks for the advice, appreciated
I’ve been doing some Genki recently and writing sentences / doing exercises helps it stick more.
Yeah I think supplemental learning is the way to go.
Please feel free to personally message me about this, I’d feel super happy to either become a shoulder to lean on, or perhaps even give a tiny bit of advice to get through where you’re at at the moment 
thanks for the support everyone, I was in two minds to post this but I’m glad I did.
Language learning is a marathon not a sprint. I’ve reset Bunpro once already, and the grammar point are naturally hard. It’s not a surprise that you are struggling with them. Take it day by day.
It just shows which parts are important to relearn or repeat. Its actually a strong tool to improve.
Also chiming in with everyone else to say I’ve also been there (arguable still am but oh well)
Not sure if you’d find this useful but this has helped me in the past to ‘troubleshoot’ grammar points: look at the point in context and write out my own literal translation of the sentence (helps me to see how the point is modifying the sentence) then consult Professor Youtube for some in depth explanations (searching for the point and N number usually finds some good stuff)
Just know that this feeling will eventually pass 
頑張って！
recently I got a ton of ghosts because all those ‘judging from’ grammar points that I dont see any way to distinguish them.
Sorry but the sentences dont help at all and are not in accordance with lessons says about them (N2, not much of explanation).
I am just marking them as correct and moving on. Honestly, not having great experience (or fun) like previous levels in bunpro at the moment.
I’ve been through it. Personally I found all of the advice to “just keep at it every day” to be counter-productive. It was better for me to entirely drop studying for a good 4-5 days and come back with a fresh mind.
I think what’s happening mentally is that during the break my brain is separating out the parts that make natural/intuitive sense, and storing those in longer-term memory with each sleep cycle. So, when I come back after several days, I have far less mental “noise” (things floating around in short-term memory), which lets me clearly identify and focus on the parts that make less natural/intuitive sense.
Everyone’s different, so I can only speak for myself. Some people swear by everyday study, so I have to respect that. But, I think it’s worth trying a break for a few days over being miserable.
This, 100%. This is how I use BunPro, and it’s very enjoyable this way. Don’t bother forcing new grammar that you’ve never seen before. Think about it, if you’ve never seen it, is it really that useful to you? I don’t recommend trying to force yourself to be able to produce grammar before you can at least clearly recall examples of that point being used.
Personally, there’s no point in me pre-emptively learning a grammar point before even being able to remember a single instance of ever encountering it. This is especially true with N2/N1 grammar.
In your case, you’re still studying N4 grammar. You need to get most of that grammar under your belt before learning primarily through immersion becomes even somewhat doable, in my opinion. Pretty much everything at that level is going to be fundamental or extremely archetypal of fundamental Japanese concepts. Heck, even at N3 that is true.
It took me 3 separate solid attempts through 3 different means spread out across plenty of time before N4 grammar truly started making sense to me. There’s no way around it imo. In fact, it might be optimal to separate your learning into 3 separate stages:
My biggest piece of advice is to have AT LEAST a pre-learning phase. In this phase, it suffices to simply read about the point, without adding it to reviews. Aim to understand it, while keeping in mind that the goal in this stage is breadth over depth - the more you pre-learn, the better. Think of it as canvassing the landscape of grammar. Your goal here is to have a rough idea of the meaning for most of the N4, maybe even N3 grammar points.
The solidifying stage can be done in tandem with the pre-learning stage. As you immerse, even if just for 5 minutes, you will encounter a ton of N4/N3 grammar. The problem is finding a sentence that you can actually understand is going to be tough. So, instead, your goal should be to be able to identify and recall details about which grammar point is being used when you encounter it. If you can’t recall details about it (such as meaning and level of formality) - heck, even if you CAN recall details about it - go ahead and re-read the resources you used in your pre-learning phase, and maybe even read another resource on that topic.
Finally, you should be ready to start producing a grammar point (adding it to your BunPro reviews) when you have solidified to the point where you can either very clearly understand the meaning of the grammar, or can remember specific instances of you encountering that grammar point. At this point, your goal is to add to production so you can grasp the point fully, distinguishing it from other points, and comprehending its own nuances.
Even a 3-staged process like this is pretty optimistic. But truly, production is harder than recall - if you don’t have clear recall of meaning, there’s no way you can expect yourself to be able to distinguish and spring out the idea that conveys the requested fine shades of meaning at will (like what BunPro requires you to).
I suspect you are trying to skip straight from pre-learning to grasping. Give yourself the solidifying stage. At the very least, separate your pre-learning and grasping stages into different days - and don’t add it if you can’t remember what you read about it even a mere few days ago.
Thanks, this makes a ton of sense.
I went through all N5 and N4 grammar on Bunpro, completing the lessons and getting the shiney badge. (pre-learning)
Subsequently I’ve been studying using Genki - the grammar has been really easy to pick up (as I’ve already seen it on BP) (solidifying)
Doing the Genki workbook, writing sentences using the gramma (grasping)
Actually using the grammar in conversation (flexing? 
)
But if what I’ve learnt in BP is 100%, I’ve probably gone over 25% of it using Genki I and can reproduce about 20% of that in conversation (why is verb conjugation when writing so much easier than when talking!!)
That’s great! With your approach, your BunPro reviews are going to be painful, but Genki is going to be a breeze. It probably just feels overwhelming when you are forcing yourself to produce at the pre-learning phase with BunPro…
But what ultimately matters is your mastery of what you learn. If this is effective, great. The only thing that concerns me is it’s not sufficiently enjoyable (by your own admission).
Since BunPro is ultimately a production-based platform, if you want it to be more enjoyable, then you’ll want to make sure you only do production-based reviews on things that you have solidified to some extent. One viable approach could be to finish up Genki to solidify most N5/N4 grammar, and then restart BunPro, adding only the points you feel are solidified, and further solidifying whatever slipped through the cracks.
Ultimately, though, all I wanted to say is there’s nothing wrong with you if your production accuracy is low - all it means is that there hasn’t been enough solidifying. And whether you want to have a challenging, but arduous process, or a more natural improvement process is up to you. At the end of the day, the only way you won’t learn Japanese is if you
Given that #1 is far more likely, I place greater importance on enjoyability than efficacy.
EDIT: But part of what is enjoyable for me is progressing, so I do care about efficacy for the sake of enjoyability, haha.
A couple of tips that might be considered cheats but it’s better than burning yourself out:
Remember, not overburdening yourself is probably more important than “finishing” faster (whatever that means) in a goal that takes years to consider accomplished. This comes from my personal experience, because around 4 years ago I burned myself out and stopped learning for 2 straight years and now I wonder how good would I be today if not for that.
getting flashbacks with all the ‘like/similar’ grammar points 
Not sure if this is helpful or not, but having a variety of things to do in relation to Japanese enhances the Bunpro experience.
Not sure if you’re only using Bunpro at the moment, but taking some time to just read and watch native contact can really breathe some new life into your studies. Even if you understand a bit, you will likely run into something that you know, and it makes all the time and effort you put in really seem like it was worth it.
For me, things only truly stick when I have seen them in other places. If they are stuck in the confines of one program or one set of flashcards, in my mind they only exist there. They only truly come to life when I see or hear them in an anime, a game, a podcast, a visual novel. When I see them in Bunpro again, pesky grammar and vocab that was a thorn in my side for weeks, suddenly becomes "朝飯前” （あさめしまえ）。
Very true!
I’m doing mainly studying at the moment, Genki work and some N5 study.
Some netflix recommendations of non-anime Japanese shows would be welcome. (I love anime, don’t get me wrong)
Lots of great points, thank you.
Oh I’m well acquainted with the OOPS button (usually when I can’t remember if the grammar point needed verb-stem or て form).
Very true, brute forcing it into memory!
Yeah, I stopped learning N3 grammar to focus on solidyifing my N5 and N4 abilities. I’m very guilty of favouring breadth over depth.
Yeah, has taken me a year to realise 
One of my big issues is dealing with the review pile. I tend to be a slave to it, rather than controlling it. I’m going to try and do X minutes per day or Y reviews per day, rather than attempting to get to zero. It’s just too convenient to do reviews compared with other kinds of studying, my phone can be in hand and looking at reviews in seconds, compared with all the faffing I do to set up my textbook and tablet etc.