Is Bunpro good for Vocab or not?

I saw some threads talking about how Bunpro is only good for grammar but bad for Vocab. Some saying Anki (or other similar SRS) is better. Honestly, I’m a little confused by that statement. I’m still a newbie here (not a complete newbie in Japanese though), but to me Bunpro seems GREAT for vocab. It’s not just words without context, like just a core Anki deck, but it makes you review them in different contexts.

So my question is: why do people say Bunpro is bad for learning vocab?

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I think it’s good for the occasional word, for example I come across food labels a lot and as I’m logging stuff for the gym, I was always looking at things like タンパク質 (Protein) 脂肪 (Fat).

For words like this, I think Bunpro is good.

But when I started following a vocabulary textbook and wanted to add every word I came across, it was hard to find them in the first place as even though my textbook is N3, the vocab could be found scattered anywhere from N4 to N2 on Bunpro.

Then when it came to reviewing them, some words go in first time, but some words for me take quite a bit of review time. This is fine for grammar, as I learn every single point. But when I’m skipping out known vocab, it’s impossible to use cram efficiently as there is no ‘cram only known items’ button.

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Welcome to the forums! :tada:

Bunpro is GREAT for studying Vocab! (not biased at all) :wink:

In all seriousness:

While has its flaws…

  1. Doesn’t have reviewable sentences for every word
  2. Some ambiguousness about what exact word that is required, leading to wrong answers that would otherwise be right
  3. A lot of the non-JLPT Vocab don’t have a tonne of info on them

These are actively being worked on:

  1. Sentences just got added for N2/N1 sentences, and more on the way, getting added rapidly
  2. Currently discussing this internally, by way of adding the “leading hints” system to Vocab too.
    • Basically, similar to the orange leading-hint text in Grammar questions, if the answer is grammatically/contextually correct, it will lead you closer to the answer, saying something like “Looking for an answer that is more…”
  3. Being worked on as we speak, pulling in more accurate data on stuff like Word Type, separating multiple definitions for the same word etc.

So I’d say for JLPT users, with all those context sentences, it’s n excellent resource to use for Vocab.
For advanced users, it currently can leave a little bit to be desired for rarer Vocab / those wanting more in depth details for specific words.

With it being built on every day though, and with user-created Decks + sharing on the way, I’d defs keep an eye on it.

Personally, I currently am going back and Cramming all of N4/N3, slowly cracking away at the 2000-word long list.
When I find a word I have forgotten about/straight up never learnt, I add it to my Reviews queue as I know there will be sentences for them.

Just my 2c, and as part of the Bunpro Team, take it with a grain of salt!

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To add a bit more: if you plan to use vocab like veritaz and add every one, then I’d probably say it’s really good and you can cram to your hearts content if needed!

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Is the audio real people or AI ?

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Welcome to the forums! Good question.

For Vocab, it’s text-to-speech (AI).

You can disable it with our latest update.

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I’m having problems with the methodology of the vocabulary past 1,100 words… I’ve reverted to Wanikani because, this is a personal anecdote, but trying to cram raw words in isn’t working as well as Wanikani at my level of knowledge. The new integration is nice because I can track my Wanikani vocabulary progress alongside my Bunpro progress, but I’m using Bunpro’s vocabulary decks mostly as filler for when I don’t have Wanikani reviews.

I see bunpro as a cram + review tool. The latter is great is both grammar and vocab cases.
Now for initial learning I think grammar and vocab don’t benefit the same from cramming.
In the case of grammar it can be efficient (if you add context aside as well).
Vocabulary on the other hand wants context first to stick. Cramming vocab is doable but far from ideal IMO but it depends on learner profile also, some people do great with cramming anyway.

I personally learn way better from self-made Anki decks with sentences I watched in my daily life or entertainment than I would from bunpro that gives me random sentences I have no connection to nor prior proactive interest in.
I currently do both Anki + bunpro vocab as I have plenty of time on my hands, but if I had less I’d stick to Anki exclusively.

Now preparing a test you might want to use a level-based list so it has its advantages also and the variety of sentences is stronger to a premade Anki deck IMO.

For vocab I would rank these tools as:

1 self-made Anki decks
2 bunpro
3 pre-made anki decks (wwway behind)

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I want to chime in here and add that the addition of the book clubs, and book club specific vocab and grammar decks is a really handy feature as well which definitely improves how handy it’s vocab learning experience.

You can find them if you hop over to Decks and then the Non-JLPT section. Considering the words you’ve already learned are counted in these decks it both lets you judge the difficulty of the deck, and therefore the book, before starting and makes it much easier to jump into native content.

So I’d say the experience is pretty good. :slight_smile:

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I have been finding it really useful. Initially, I was doing the cloze method but that took way too long, and did not help with kanji recognition.

I now use the review reading type, it goes much faster now and helps with kanji recognition. Being able to study the vocab in various different context also helps with my learning. I like the voices, albeit some of the kanji readings has been off, but the team is fixing them! I recently also tried to change the order of learning (e.g. doing it ranked by general or anime first), but that just gave me a bunch of grammar-esque points, which just means I’m saving the tougher kanji and vocab for later. I’m too sure about this, but it sounds like a good way to get started.

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I love using Bunpro for vocab! I also appreciate how the words are given within the context. Not all the words in 教科書 decks support cloze/manual fill in yet, let alone JLPT以外, but as far as I can see the team is gradually adding more and more support

I did the entire N5 vocab deck but left it at that. My main issue is that (unless things have changed recently) the review intervals are completely fixed instead of taking the word difficulty into account. That makes it frustrating for me to start a big batch of vocab at once because I end up micromanaging the SRS (kicking words I know well to a higher level, principally).

While I don’t love Anki and I think the UI is atrocious, I still use it as my main tool for vocab because the SRS algo is much more advanced. If it notices that you always get a certain word right, the interval will grow fast, if you get it wrong a lot the intervals will be reduced (especially with the newer FSRS algo).

This is also an issue for bunpro grammar but to a lesser extent because of ghosts effectively forcing more reviews for failed items and having too many reviews for items you know well is not that bad because there are relatively few grammar points overall compared to vocab, and the variety of test sentences means that you actually have to think and not just write the same answer every time.

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I think it’s possible to have a poor first experience.

When I started the N5 vocab deck, I started the reviews and saw something like「これは__です」and, well, I’m going to need a hint here. As a beginner the first hint is incomprehensible, and then you’re playing twenty questions for a bit, and finally it says “pen”, and you can type in 「ペン」and the sentence is irrelevant.

Obviously I found the settings, and changed to a more Anki-like review type, which is nice except there’s an extra click involved. But for some reason 寒い had furigana but 高い didn’t, and there was no immediately obvious way to change it in the deck settings and I had to go searching again.

Once you’ve spent the time sorting out the various options to your liking it’s just like any other SRS really. It doesn’t quite have the flexibility/complexity of Anki, but whether that’s good or bad is down to how much flexibility you need and how much complexity you’re prepared to put up with.

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Bunpro is a great tool for learning vocab but I don’t feel it is (yet) ready to be a single or primary source for study.

I think that might change Bunpro’s vocab offering has improved fast but at the moment that’s my view.

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Personally, what I think we need is the ability to add your vocab words and to create custom decks.
There also must be a way to reconcile after Bunpro adds the word to an official deck.

Example:

  • I want to add XXXX to SRS, but Bunpro does not have it.
  • I add it as a custom word, with my own sentences.
  • Bunpro decides to add the word to an official deck.
  • There must be a merge button or something to reconcile.
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I think there needs to be structure outside of JLPT levels for Kanji. The new ones I’ve learned on Bunpro compared to WK are not sticking as well. It’s great for kana / katakana vocab because like other languages, the best vocab learning tool is immersion, but the second best is flash cards. I would implement the following changes to bunpro:

  • Create several Kanji learning paths excluding Kana vocab, including one focused on JLPT and one focused on becoming fluent - this is a monstrous task
  • Create a separate Kana vocab deck for each JLPT level - this can be done tomorrow
  • Remove the “grammar vocab” from the vocab decks - 例えば - によると is in the N3 grammar section but the N4 vocab section.
  • Reevaluate whether or not Kanji for usually Kana words should be taught as early as it is. 呉れる, 貰うand 林檎 are a probably better off in N1 or even a supplementary deck in their Kanji forms. It’s tough because do you really want to learn these twice? But I think that’s just the nature of Kanji. 亜米利加 (アメリカ) isn’t on the list, but I’ve see nit more than 呉れる and though this is anecdotal, the point is that it’s certainly something you shouldn’t learn all in one go.
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