Is bunpro really worth it?

Bunpro
#41

Been using almost exclusively Bunpro for about a year and got to the point where I can watch and understand a lot of slice of life / simpler animes without subtitles whatsoever, am able to handle most situations in Japan in Japanese, hold smalltalk and similar things. I’m nowehre close to the N1 in a year speedrunners and there’s surely people who progress faster than I did even on Bunpro. But for me, someone who has other hobbies, and works a lot, having an app where I can squeeze in some spontaneous high-intensity Japanese study time whenever I have a free minute, is high value.

Bunpro has been the vast majority of my study-time, and after I year I can effectively function in Japanese to a useful degree, and didn’t have to rely on translation apps anymore, the last time I was there. Far from fluent, but I’ll get there someday. Bunpro alone has turned out to be a very “worth it” way to learn Japanese.

You didn’t ask me but I see a lot of people on the forums who don’t use cloze because it takes too much time. I switched to reading for a while and realized that I, at best, add those words to passive vocab but never use them if I do it that way. Cloze has turned out to be non-negotiable for me. Takes much more time, but at least I end up actually being able to recall a word in convo and really use it, if I learn it with cloze.

Lots of people simply don’t care about the JLPT

Bunpro alone will not be able to do that, but it is worth it to have it as part of the stack that will

4 Likes
#42

How big a problem is this really, though? Or rather, how big a problem should it be perceived to be? If a user bites off more than they can chew, or ends up being busier than they thought they’d be, they can always drop items from their review queue and come back to them later. Wouldn’t a good solution just be highlighting the fact that adding something to the queue is not a blood pact, and the system is pretty flexible? I think people tend to have the view that their reviews are, like, assigned to them, and they’re at the mercy of the system. But that’s not true even in Anki. There’s no reason to act like they’re taking out a high interest loan. If anything, there ought to be more ways to drop things from the queue (like automatic leech tagging).

#43

The problem is that language learning is done best by daily consistent reviews. Having too many items in a queue can cause a motivation slump, especially if going through that queue you’re repeating the same mistakes and not learning.

Yes, there is flexibility in removing items, doing it over again, but a user having to repeat content isn’t exactly great either.

Source:

Screenshot_20260408-132104
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I ended up adding the N1 vocab deck too fast at 30 words a day, eventually 60 words a day at the end, then was ill for 4 days so my reviews piled up and I lost motivation for a few weeks. I’m back now and enjoying the grind through the cards, but many people would not find this rewarding.

6 Likes
#44

this makes me weep

5 Likes
#45

Like Hairymini mentioned below, severe motivation slumps arise when users add a lot very early on because the SRS really hasn’t “started” yet (i.e. items are showing up 2+ weeks afterwards) and suddenly after adding a bunch of points every day they’re now at something like 70+ reviews super early on. It’s true that some users could just manually go back and remove items, but that’s unfortunately not the average use-case and thus some lighter guardrails were implemented to help let users know what could happen if they keep going over their daily limit.

It isn’t like we lock users into a queue or hand tie them; there are some days users may study 1 less than their daily goal, there are also some days where they study 1 extra one if the Items were a bit on the easier side. There will be some other things we’ll likely add along the way, like some sort of automatic leech system like you talk about, but we’ve seen a big improvement in not as many users being frustrated as before the system was put into place so that’s a big win in my books.

I guess one more thing to add - I think your point about the system being flexible, etc. is an important & great one. I think majority of users after a month or so find out what pace works best for them, when to slow down and not do all of their daily goals because their review queue is piling up too high for their liking, etc. My point is more about users within their first month who don’t really fall under that category since it’s too early for that knowledge to set in yet

#46

Hope that’s not all cloze+input

1 Like
#47

It’s uhhh… Reading. But I’m working through the grammar with Cloze again to boost my writing.

#48

any translation gang here, , , , I dont have time for reading example sentences (tho I use cloze for grammar)

1 Like
#49

I will sing the praises of reading mode until Bunpro 2 comes out. It’s helped my comprehension so much.

I also don’t do enough reading of normal native material which is my problem…

3 Likes
#50

I switch it up occasionally and currently have it on translation, so that I can use input.

1 Like
#51

For me,

  • I fill in the blank for grammar no matter what.
  • Vocab is translate and get the right reading for the highlighted vocab item.
  • Reading and listening is immersion, which I’d much rather do than flash cards :sweat_smile:

I’d recommend reading the N5/N4 sentences for both grammar and vocab, though. I preferred those to the immersion for babies out in the real world. Especially since a lot of that has words Japanese children know that didn’t need to be learned until later (like 斑 and 縞 for animal patterns).