sorry that i got that impression across, while i said what i said, its the 4th time i used bunpro, the other 3 times it was not addictive enough and i stopped doing it and also like you said i often had trouble getting the nuances. i think its just that i also saw those grammar passively a lot now that it is easier for me. so i think your criticism is correct
I also just find the Wanikani app to be far more polished and snappy than the Bunpro app, and I generally think Wanikani’s design ensures a better balance of new content vs reviews that Bunpro does far worse at. That said, they teach different things so can’t replace one with the other.
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There is no WK app, just some generous 3rd party contributors and a brief beta last year. I believe AlliCrab fell apart due to an ios upgrade. Pre-C19, I used Tsurukame quite a bit out of necessity but if had to do WK on a standard browser with no control of typos or basic scripts, I might have gone insane. Credit to BP as younger platform, at least they had a native app upon release…I see Bunpyro is doing well but I’ve never seen it.
I think it’s a hard balance between a rigid single path system which is great for beginners and a customized one which beginners get lost easier. If for example, a new user want to study N2 then they start today with BP…with WK you may not even get there in a year but their service seems to be very easy for beginners to start with.
Feels like a mildly inflammatory thing for you to post, but alright, I dig it.
I feel like Bunpro treats me more like an adult, and Wanikani treats me like a child. Wanikani deliberately curbs my learning a lot, and sends me to the doghouse over typos.
Bunpro lets me decide my own fate, and I will always appreciate that about you, Bunpro.
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I think Bunpro is less addicting because of what other people said:
It isn’t trying as hard to be addicting as wanikani
grammar isn’t as flat memorization as vocab/kanji.
I find this in both bunpro an kanshudo that I want to finish all of the exercises in my textbook, before I go on to the next lesson which slows me down.
I guess if I do bunpro’s srs, and only look use genki for the ones I have trouble with it would be snappy.
I can’t stand WaniKani. My study style requires autonomy. I find that I often have bursts in motivation, which would just go straight to the gutter with something like WaniKani. That’s why I appreciate methods like RTK and BunPro.
Like for real, I learned (and wrote - hella important to write it out) over 1,800 kanji-keyword pairs via RTK in 30 days. From there, I slowed down significantly on the RTK system. After I eventually got past the 2,000 mark, I found that I didn’t even need to finish it anymore - I can just add vocab to my Anki and well over 9/10 times, I know the keywords for all kanji in the term. If I don’t, learning any new kanji is a breeze as I rarely don’t know all the radicals/constituent parts (and I’ve never had more than one unknown part to a new Kanji so far).
Athough I still like using mnemonics for the Kanji themselves, over time, I found I don’t even need to explicitly make mnemonics for connecting the Kanji in vocab - just writing out the RTK keywords on my Anki cards is enough. Over time, you start encountering the Kanji enough that just the reading of the word is a huge aid in remembering which Kanji the term consists of.
If I had used a system like WaniKani, I’d probably have gotten little to no use out of my month-long burst of motivation. And then I’d probably be at like only the 300th kanji by now because I would be slowed down with the vocab they offer. Instead, I’m now able to pair my knowledge of kanij keywords with YomiChan to dive into media and find the vocab that I want to add, not what some program has predetermined for me.
Likewise, I love that BunPro gives me autonomy. I wouldn’t have it any other way. There times when I just want to review what I’ve done that day, and then there are times where I’ll go through an entire Tobira chapter in the next day or two. My studying habits depend on these bursts.
That isn’t to say I’m not consistent, though. I just like the ability to choose when to go into “learning new material mode” and days where I’m just like “yeah, today is a review-only day - and maybe I’ll leave half of them for tomorrow.”
BunPro gives me flexibility without making me feel like I’m wasting money down the drain. With WaniKani, any deviation from what the robot tells you means lost money - there is no making it up the next day. If you don’t wake up at 4 AM to do your reviews for the next hour or more, that is one more hour that you are paying for and cannot make up for, no matter how diligent you are overall.
That anxiety alone is enough to make me shudder.
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I use both Wanikani and Bunpro, and I’ve found myself more… consistent with Bunpro, I guess? So I guess that lends itself to addictability?
I’ve ended up falling into review hell a fair few times with WK, and ended up resetting to 1 to try and build the habit up again (the idea of facing almost 1000 reviews of stuff I’d definitely forgotten was too daunting). I’m definitely back into the swing of things now, and it’s given me stuff to do when I’m at my desk.
However, I like the self-pacing in Bunpro. If I’m not getting enough reviews, then I learn a few more points. I think I’m fairly slow (180/218 on N3, with N4/5 done), but I don’t mind that. As long as I do it daily, and add new points when and as I feel ready, I feel like I’m getting something out of it. And I get a weird little rush when I notice some grammar in the wild, and now when I listen to music, or I’m earwigging in the staff room, I’m picking up bits and pieces and putting them together. Even if I only vaguely understand, or don’t know what they’re actually talking about, I’m still getting something from it.
I have to be a lot stricter with myself on Bunpro, though. That backspace… I should remove it from my keyboard sometimes.
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I definitely struggle more with the grammar points. They take more effort to learn and are more complex and difficult to remember. That definitely works against “addictability”.
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A lot of good points. To add, as a game developer I see core differences in gamification:
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BunPro requires opt-in for advancement, while WaniKani doesn’t. BP has no concept of pending lessons, so unless you manually start lessons, you only have old reviews, which slowly dry up. WK constantly pushes you because finishing reviews gradually unlocks lessons which are presented as TODOs, and those add more reviews, and so on, giving you a short and consistent game loop. BP could solve it by doling out lessons proactively, based on already learned items’ SRS state.
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BunPro progress steps are much larger. On WaniKani, I can finish a single level and feel like I’ve made clear measurable progress. I get a congratulatory email, the dashboard changes completely, I unlock a bunch of new lessons, etc. On BP the “levels” are meaningless, and the actual progress is mainly tracked through the N5/N4/N3/N2/N1 progress bars. To get the satisfaction of a “level up” I would have to finish a whole N level, which is a much, much larger amount of effort than a single WK level, and the further away the reward is, the less motivation a user has to work toward it. BP could solve this by splitting each N# level into chunks, showing them prominently, and making a big ceremony of finishing a chunk.
When I was preparing for JLPT and my stay in Japan, I preferred BP’s approach because I could do intensive studying - I got from scratch to N4 in a few months. Now that I’m back and Japanese is no longer my main priority, I prefer WK’s approach because I can maintain it passively and still feel like I’m making clear progress. I think the two approaches can totally be merged, though.
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Perhaps the issue isn’t that they should be taught ‘better’, but rather taught ‘in a different way’. The current system was more than enough for the majority to learn effectively, but it is well established that different people learn in different ways. It is impossible to cater to all learning styles unfortunately.
A common problem people have with Japanese in general (not just grammar), is that they want to learn it through the most ‘gamified’ way as possible. According to the organization that measures the time it takes to master a foreign language for English speakers, Japanese is the hardest in the world, by a lonnnnnnng way. That is to say that you are more likely to become a doctor, than you are to become fluent in Japanese. What I am getting at is that you can’t expect to achieve something that is even harder than obtaining a medical license without a heck of a lot of pain, endurance and sacrifice of time, patience, and sometimes sanity.
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I think you’re looking for: Foreign Service Institute (FSI) from the US Dept of State.
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That’s probably the one, I was too lazy to look it up again hahah
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