I see a lot of people on the learn japanese subreddit vouching for the efficacy of Reading rather than Fill in. Is it actually better?
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I believe it is overall more effective at least, but I have no evidence for this.
The idea is by using reading mode you practice reading. Once youāve read a word/grammar pattern a lot of times youāll start to recognize it by hearing too when you practice listening, and once youāve heard a word/grammar pattern a lot of times youāll start feeling somewhat comfortable trying to use it as well, but in the end you need to practice this too and fill-in does not feel like actual output practice to me at all. Itās just another form of recall because you donāt construct the sentence itself.
I did fill in grammar for N5-N3 and it didnāt feel any more useful than reading mode. Synonyms were annoying and I wasnāt able to actually use most of the grammar in fill in because I never practiced writing in the first place so I donāt see how it makes a difference over reading mode except itās less helpful for reading and takes more time. Switching to reading mode made reviews faster and gave me more time for immersion which made me more comfortable with the language in general which made me comfortable start doing output by communicating in Japanese and develop that skill from scratch by looking up sentence structures and grammar patterns over and over.
Iām sure someone has another perspective, but fill-in served no purpose for my needs.
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It really depends what you want to do and what your current level is. Reading is the best for learning the language, input is the best for being able to actually speak the language.
However, reading is far more time efficient than input as you donāt need to spend a large portion of your reviewing time trying to guess the right thing to input. So in that sense, reading is going to be far better.
If I could go back myself and ādo it all againā, Iād just read until my vocab was at about 5k, and then move to input. That way by the time you start input, you would have a better sense of the sentence as a whole and be more likely to recognize patterns.
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Well, same thing in this sense really. Inputting the answer through typing is also output 
. I was referring purely to the method of review on the site.
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Agree with @Asher completely. You listen and understand before you speak and write.
The writing questions are nice for helping refine precision in grammar points, but there is no scenario where you are given a sentence with one missing grammar point and an English clue.
That said, recall and output is a real skill that is valuable to practice and reinforces comprehension. If you know how to use a grammar point, you almost certainly know how to comprehend it.
Bunpro having varied example sentences for each vocab and grammar point is a gold mine of reading material. The hardest part with learning vocab and grammar is grasping the nuance, and really can only be done with reading.
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Do both 
Read everything, understand the meaning, then fill in the word.
Itās two activities instead of one!
Edit: this advice was outdated
With just input it will take a few thousand of hours to get to the level of decent output (decent in my opinion).
After 500 hours you kind of can start communicating with at least minimal confort in ę„åøø topics.
So knowing basic grammar well can help with feeling confident when you speak, and knowing it well will also help understand the language itself deeper.
But on the other side we have more input which is good.
And again, more input, but what about its quality and depth? Maybe understanding concepts like etymology will be overall better?
Maybe we should do it all at the same time to be more holistic?
Whhhaaaa itās tooo something.
I feel like advising something like this at this point:
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In my opinion reading (or listening) typ reviews are the best option here on bunpro. every sentence you read will up your reading skill and reinforces all vocab and grammar used in the sentence.
in theory fill-in type style would be great for practising and deepening the active knowledge, but the way bunpro does it seems to require guessing and even frustration on some occasions. the time you use to just guess the correct grammar pattern or vocab could be better used for different output exercises that are more effective than just fill-in.
in my opinion the fill in type reviews are just a mediocre in-between of not really output, not really quick, not much better retention style of question and inferior to any other style.
But I bet there are still people who prefer this style over others and do better with this style compared to other styles. In the end a lot of other choices and preferences influence what will work best for you.
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Another thing that hasnāt been mentioned yet : personally I also use reading mode to practice speaking. Iāll read the sentence outloud once (which is also a great way to check if Iām able to read kanji quickly without furigana) and then a second time after the vocal record played. It works pretty well for developing your accent and speaking speed, even if youāre not the one producing those sentences.
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If I were a beginner again then Iād probably do fill-in for grammar and reading for vocab.
For grammar, having to mentally go through and think about how things connect and what is appropriate in terms of context and meaning really helps cement things. It can be easy to trick yourself into thinking you know the nuance and grammatical rules of something well when you perhaps donāt, if you never need to try to use it in context. I also would emphasise the fact that you can and (and really should!) be reading the sentence fully when doing fill-in type reviews, so you will be getting the input regardless.
For vocab, purely from a time efficiency perspective and the fact that in most cases vocab is more straightforward than grammar in terms of use and rules, Iād say reading mode is the way to go.
At the end of the day it is all going to come down to personal preference and goals though, so Iād always recommend trying out different modes and seeing how they feel (you can test some out in cram).
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Iād personally recommend doing a bit of research into language acquisition and, as others have said, start by defining your goals. I donāt have an academic background in linguistics, so I usually refrain from commenting on these kinds of posts.
That said, Iāve looked into the research on input vs. output and can confirm that theyāre related but distinct skills. They even activate different areas of the brain. If your goal is to improve output, you need to actively practice output (speaking, writing, sentence creation). For example, I can read all the JÅyÅ kanji, but I can only write a few dozen because Iāve never trained that skill directly.
Iād also encourage you to read up on the academic work comparing cloze-style reviews (fill-in-the-blank) to simple meaning-recognition reviews.
Based on what Iāve read, and my own goals of holistic language mastery, Iām a big advocate of cloze-style reviews, especially at the N5āN3 levels, where youāre still internalizing the fundamental building blocks of the language.
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I think for learning the fundamentals, and having a good grasp of nuance for when to use vocab/grammar, Bunpro is good.
At some point youāll want to do longer form writing/speaking drills. My textbook usually gives a topic and some grammar points that I must use, but for that you need external feedback.
Tutors are very good, especially for speaking practice, but very much come at a premium. AI (the horror!!) can work as a pretty good tutor for correcting grammar mistakes. AI can also give a pretty good range of feedback, such as whether something sounds natural, or too formal or so on.
Iāll caveat by saying my writing skill is pretty bad, but I disproportionately spend more time reading/Bunpro SRS.
Oh, just googled holistic approach to language learning and understood that it has already existed, which is kind of not surprisingā¦
On the other side it feels like it takes root from āholistic learningā in general (which I just googled as well) which focuses on personās growth in all aspects.
In most articles Holistic language learning looks like a kind of thing similar to it, something like a thoughtful version of Ajatt. A lot of them kind of disregarded more traditional methods like studying grammar.
When I came up with this term myself, it was rather about making it really holistic, connecting language with yourself as well as with all itās fields, learning every aspect of it and not missing anything, incorporating all methods.
I wonder what else there is 
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I think one thing to consider with the fill-in vs. reading question type decision is how much you can trust yourself to accurately gauge whether you know the vocab/grammar point. I was talking about this with someone recently. I do the fill-in style and he does the reading. I would definitely lie to myself about knowing something with the reading style. I know this because of my history with flashcard decks way back in high school and college.
I believe I would also get bored without the need to type something.
So I think, overall, itās an individual choice even if people/research/whatever says that one specific method works. Just like physical exercise, the only thing that works for you is what youāll stick with and do properly.
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I wasnāt referring to any scientific or āofficialā study method! Just learning the language while balancing reading, writing, speaking, and listening rather than focus on one at a time!
There is a part of me that says even if you never plan on using one or more of the aforementioned skills, it is still more efficient to learn all of them for the added reinforcement of neural pathways. Especially speaking. Practicing active, real-time recall of words in context and in conversation really helps them stick!