Option to make Bunpro example sentences more straight to the point?

Bunpro
#1

So this just happened to me today:

You learn a new grammar point and you’re really happy about it. The examples used during the lesson are concise and easy to understand, using vocabulary you’ve already seen before (one line of text, maybe two, with JLPT words from the level right below the one you’re studying). This makes everything clear and helps you differentiate the nuance from previously learned grammar points, letting you focus on the actual grammar construction rather than on learning new vocabulary.

Then, the next day, you review the same grammar point, but this time the example sentence uses words you’ve never seen before (like “demon king” or “pirate warrior of the seven seas”?). You activate furigana so you can at least read these unusual words. Great, now you know all the words used in the example sentence. But you still can’t understand the grammar used in the sentence that precedes the fill-in-the-blank. You click on hints four times until the translation finally appears. Great, now you understand the whole sentence because you had to reveal the translation. You find the correct grammar to fill in.

Congratulations, you just spent three minutes on a single grammar review, learned three new words that aren’t even at your JLPT level, and instead of focusing on pure, comprehensible grammar practice, you’ve lost all motivation to finish your reviews. You switch to another activity because your very first Bunpro review of the day was too frustrating.

You then start generating your own easy-to-understand sentences based on Nihongo no Mori videos, YouTube input, or AI, and you add them as self-study sentences for every grammar point you’ve learned, just to make reviews easier and shorter so you can spend more time on what actually matters, immersion.

Am I the only one who feels this way? For the same grammar point, some example sentences are super easy to review and make the grammar stick, but others are such a pain that it feels like I’m actually going backwards, wasting precious brainpower trying to decipher a sentence that wasn’t worth it at all.

Would it be possible in the future to filter example sentences and only select the ones we want to review? Honestly, if it were up to me, I’d just keep reviewing the same three sentences that perfectly summarize the nuance between this grammar and the others.

Right now, I feel like crap when doing my Bunpro reviews, but then I pick up a book, see the same grammar used in a sentence, and think, “Why is it easier to understand this grammar point in a book than in my Bunpro review?”.

I know we are here to prepare for the JLPT, but within the grammar part of the JLPT the sentences are shorter, and during the text comprehension we have better context. It feels like bunpro is missing the sweetspot between ‘sentence is too easy and you don’t learn anything’ and ‘sentence is too complicated and you learn too much information for you to digest’. And I wish that could be fixed by using my own sentences and skipping some pain in the ahh bunpro examples.

sorry for the rant, bunpro is awesome, BUT…

3 Likes
#2

OMG the “demon king” sentence! 🫣🤦🏻‍♀️

I love Bunpro, but I have wondered the same thing as you re vocab I haven’t studied as well as the unnecessary complexity and length of some review sentences. When I encounter a sentence like that, I tend to ignore the words I don’t know and just zero in on the grammar point. But trying to learn the grammar point in isolation like that is probably not the best way…

2 Likes
#3

We actually semi-completed a project a couple of months ago to add several new, very simple sentences toward the beginning of every new grammar point’s set of reviews (N5 to N3 only). The only reason this has not been released yet is because we have also been working on several other very time intensive projects that will also be coming out soon (also we tend to not release anything close to the JLPT’s in order not to mess around with anyone’s reviews when they could be using the site heavily).

As far as some of the random words and sentences go, it is something everybody struggles with in the beginning, and I completely understand the desire to focus purely on the grammar without introducing any new words, but sentences, words, context, and style all goes hand in hand with grammar in terms of where certain things will naturally be used. There are grammar patterns that are ultra formal, but will occasionally be used sarcastically in over the top sentences, so we try to capture these kinds of things as well.

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There are also just a few real weird sentences that I cannot think of a good excuse for :upside_down_face:.

8 Likes
#4

I loved the demon king sentence and would prefer not simplifying the sentences :woman_shrugging: hope it will be optional for others but would hate to see a forced change.

4 Likes
#5

I’d like to see the ability to tap words, be able to see their definition and even “mine” them. That way I can quickly add them to reviews or a deck to review them later.

Words like Demon King and Pirate Warrior of the 7 Seas are a bit out there, but they come up in popular media like Zelda and One Piece respectively. Usually you can infer the meaning from the kanji even if you slip up on the reading. Bunpro has a lot of pop media references which are helpful for memorising certain phrases as they can act as an anchor.

With that said Bunpro has a long way to go to support the learning journey without needing such a strong vocab/kanji foundation. However at high levels like N2 and N1 having to infer meaning, or embrace uncertainty, from unknown words is an important skill.

3 Likes
#6

Another option that would be useful is vocab lists for each grammar point. This way you could start learning the pre-requisite vocab that comes up in each grammar point before actually learning the grammar.

#7

Perhaps this may be an onpopular opinion, but I think a lot of this problem ceases to exist when you use something like Yomitan. I suppose you could demand Bunpro replicate that functionality within the site/app, but to me it seems like such a waste of manpower; the opportunity cost of other things they could be working on seems too great, IMHO.

Personally, I get annoyed with stuff like the random example problem that fills up my entire screen. Considering you usually only need a portion of a sentence to figure out what to write, it seems so gratuitous and self-indulgent. But TBH it’s not that big a deal. I might roll my eyes at stuff like Megumi-chan, wizards, and [INSERT ANIME REFERENCE], but if I were the one being catered to, you’d have words like 護衛艦、排他的経済水域, and 機動部隊, which I’m sure would make a lot of other people go “fucking why?” or something. You could dumb it down to the lowest common denominator, but you don’t grow by staying in the comfortable zone. In any event, You can’t make everyone happy, and if you attempt to do so you’ll come out with a milquetoast result (and you’re almost certain to still have people not happy).

2 Likes
#8

I don’t know if Bunpro can ever avoid that within its chosen framework. Example sentences are rigidly linked to 1 target grammar or vocab.

Should Bunpro change to have 1 massive pool of example sentences that selects n+1 sentences for your reviews whenever possible (like jpdb)? That seems incompatible with manually curated hints (hints are only written for 1 target word).

That would be nice.
Unskippable content has been my biggest pain point with every guided SRS tool. In WK you cannot skip meaningless “WK radicals”, or anything really, in Bunpro I would have loved to skip some sentences with (imho) incorrect/misleading English translations, and in jpdb sentences with misparsed words are really distracting.