Needed time and form above sentence

[Neko]

When I picked up Bunpro again last month, I also started to just use the Japanese / English sentence as hint (level 1-2) instead of the translation (level 3-4) because it is much easier to understand what grammar point is wanted in that case

One problem I have with this is that I sometimes make errors because neither the info above the review sentence nor the explanation text gives me the info if I need present/past or positive/negative. Is giving information about these things above the review sentence planned? Is it obvious enough by the sentence and I just don’t get the meaning? Or do I have to look into the next hint-stage for this?

[ThePurpleOrange]

I find I have the same issues sometimes when the answer could be ambiguous - for example the below:

Without going to the final hint phase to obtain [away from both speaker and listener], is it possible to know whether the answer is あんな or そんな?

Other times I’ve had issues are when I don’t know a couple of vocab words to fully understand the context, but I guess that is what the extra hints are for.

As opposed to something like this which is pretty obvious what the answer should be:

[CursedKitsune]

I think there is a fundemental issue that the way that Bunpro is “meant” to be used is never stated anywhere, as far as I know, and as the team behind tries to cater to as many use-cases as humanly possible (which I am thankful for) it probably is impossible to say exactly the “correct” way to use Bunpro. Having said that, three things seem to be universally true based on my user experience.

1. This is a JLPT based service. It is not frequency based nor is it a general grammar guide. I have never taken the JLPT but it seems to be heavily skewed towards it. The order and explanations are based around passing the JLPT in almost all cases. If you want a general resource based on conversational Japanese then look at Tae Kim (and there are many general resources for the many other possible focuses)

2. If you stray from the official Bunpro order then you will perhaps get confused. This feeds off of the first point but the order things are taught are pretty rigid, especially in the earlier stages when the user probably has no experience of native materials. This is unavoidable for a system like this but it should be kept in mind that Bunpro is not a series of discrete articles but a series which builds upon itself. If you want a discrete set of articles then look at the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar or something.

3. The hint system is or was designed with the idea of the user using the full translation in mind. As such many questions can’t be answered without seeing the full translation due to tense or other aux words being attached which you can’t know without know the full translation. If you want something without full translations for grammar then I don’t know what to suggest other than your own Anki deck. There are obviously Japanese only resources for intermediate+ learners but you would have to put them into an SRS (which would almost certainly be Anki, as things stand currently).

These three things are the most common roadblocks I see for users (ignoring Wanikani users who think Bunpro works identically to Wanikani) although I would personally add that I add points that I am familiar with or am mostly sure I will remember without too much bother so my retention is pretty high and I “learn” grammar through immersion. Many users seem to learn in Bunpro first with low retention and relearn through immersion later. I can’t say what is better but this is something that Bunpro itself is seemingly agnostic on.

The hints had an overhaul some months ago and then they fairly recently received the Japanese version. I do think another edit would be good but I also understand why they currently have left some questions to require a full translation to be answered. I always read the sentence and hint in Japanese, guess, reveal everything, guess again and then answer. It isn’t really important if my answer changes as I will see the same grammar again fairly soon in the wild if it is important and if I don’t see it then it can’t have been that important. This does come down to the fundemental question of whether you learn grammar through Bunpro or through immersion, though. For lower levels extremely “full” hints are probably more useful. This is a topic worth discussing although after using Bunpro for about 20 months I am not sure what is actually best here as people use this site in such varied ways.

[Sidgr]

I also agree that the part of the hint in the brackets and the tense/formality should be indexed in Japanese in the nuance itself.

[I-k-d]

I also feel like when the have multiple conjunctions within one question they should put all the hints below for all of the conjuctions, im sick of getting things wrong cause I wrote なってきた instead of なってきていた or something

[Asher]

For vocab, we have removed the need for this by making only ever the standard form or the stem required in the answer. We will continue to polish the feature for grammar as well by adding any tense information that is missing. This is one of the polish tasks that we have scheduled for completion this year.

[davebp]

There should be enough information in the question (with all hints hidden) to allow the knowledgeable user to know (not guess) the answer.

If there isn’t, then we are all just playing mad-libs.

[Sidgr]

The word hint is overloaded here, what I mean is the nuance. I consider that to be the actual question, its not really a hint.

Maybe our terminology is confused.

A Japanese sentence with a blank devoid of any hint or nuance could have a near infinite number of potential solutions. There has to be some added information, I think the concern here is that there is often more or less than required, and certain aspects are not included.

@Asher already assuaged my concerns generally; but to reiterate, the nuance of a given sentence in either English or Japanese should in my opinion contain: context, tense, aspect, and formality. Maybe that is too much or too little on a case by case basis, but generally that would be the strongest starting point, as far as I currently think about language acquisition from a grammar perspective.

The reason being is when we are going to use or perceive a particular grammar all of those things should not be a mystery to us in a real situation.

[davebp]

Yeah. What you said.

There should always be enough information in the prompt to determine the answer.

Additional information should be optionally available.