I bought a year of Bunpro almost exactly a year ago and it was, hands down, the best move I’ve made in my Japanese-learning career. I’d spent two and a half years on WaniKani and still couldn’t read Yotsuba – despite halfheartedly going through a textbook, I wasn’t giving grammar nearly the attention it deserved . Somewhat problematically, I was also set on taking the N3 in December, which gave me just about two months to prepare.
I ran through all 100+ N5 grammar points on the first day to refresh, and then started on a breakneck pace of 10 grammar points every day (with full ghosts, finishing all my reviews every day) all the way through N4 and N3. I ended up finishing the last batch of N3 lessons on the day of the JLPT, sitting at a table with my laptop while I waited for the classrooms to open. Needless to say, I didn’t pass (though it was surprisingly narrow failure when I eventually got my results!).
Over the next six months I made my way through N2 at a much more leisurely pace, because at this point I was suddenly able to actually read. I got through vol. 1 of Yotsuba and read a few other “beginner-friendly” books like 徒然チルドレン and からかい上手の高木さん but the pace was still pretty slow – I was still barely out of N3 and there was a lot of grammar I didn’t know (and couldn’t imagine how to look up). At this point I decided to shake up my approach – I would read whatever I could, skipping what I didn’t understand, and just try to get as much exposure as possible. I picked up ５等分の花嫁 vol. 1 and jumped into the deep end.
This ended up being a game-changer. The more I read, the more grammar I found, and the more likely I was to see something I’d just learned. Sometimes it was the opposite, and I would figure out some pattern in context only to come across it on the site shortly thereafter. My comprehension skyrocketed and my reading speed improved with every book I read, and as I went, I found myself skipping less and less simply because the amount that I didn’t understand was steadily decreasing.
Right now, I’ve got every currently-available grammar point in circulation. My stats look like this:
What I’m wondering now is, should I renew my sub right away or pause it until more N1 material is added? Would I be better off continuing to review my current material (which takes about 10 minutes per day) or spend that time reading more native material?
Any feedback is appreciated!
