I wish there was a review mode for just particles. Currently my best option is to go through Minna no Nihongo review sections and review the answers. Of course, no explanations that way.
10 Likes
Maybe you could use Bunpro’s cram feature for this. I’m not very familiar with cram, but I think you would need to manually pick out the particle grammar points from a list of all of the grammar points.
2 Likes
That’s not really going to work for N3 and above grammar. You need both the associated grammar point and particle practice. e.g. Noun + のように、木で作られた橋 or 米から作られた麺. Minna Nihongo 2 appears to be the best practice for the more advanced particle + grammar points.
1 Like
Could you give some examples of what you’re looking for? For example, something you find in Minna no Nihongo that is difficult/not-possible to review in the same/similar way on Bunpro?
Basically, how would this ‘particle practice/review mode’ work, in your eyes? What are some examples?
1 Like
Maybe something like this: a mode that takes a number of random example sentences from the grammar points you already studied, cloze-deleting (all?) particles in the sentence and you have to type them in?
I would also love something like that. But I’m unsure about some practical aspects and have not really thought it through.
1 Like
Isn’t it better to just study their use inside grammar points? Why do you want to isolate them if they’re in a set pattern?
Because that’s how they show up on quizzes and tests. Also there are probably over a hundred points, so going through the hundreds of grammar points available on Bunpro and figuring out which ones have particles, which forms need particles, etc. isn’t an effective use of time. Plus those tests often have the “none” option. You can’t go and remember the grammar point from the test question, and thus particles remain a pain to practice and left to linger for years until you are able to just “feel right” about them.
I teach English grammar, so I will use that as an example.
The textbook says: 例なら先週末に楽しんだことについて…[instructions in Japanese]
例: I enjoyed eating ramen with my family.
- I enjoyed ______ [play baseball]
- I enjoyed ______ [talk with my friend]
This is the same format as bunpro cloze
Similar to listening cram. There is a particle cram
- I enjoyed play ___ baseball (answer none)
- I enjoyed talking ____ friend (answer with my or with a)
This would probably be really time consuming to set up. It’s worth while for me to ask my students, cause they struggle with English particles too.
(I have no comment to make on the topic of this thread but the English words you are talking are called prepositions, not particles - not sure if you were using the same word just analogously or not but in case it was a mistake I thought you may want to know. Wasn’t sure if I should say anything but if you’re teaching the topic then it’s worth using naming conventions that would be consistent with textbooks etc. Japanese particles and English prepositions are also not too similar and a word order exercise is probably closer in grammatical terms. The usage of some prepositions, especially in certain collocations, is in effect arbitrary whereas English word order and Japanese particle choice has a very clear and explicable way of being analysed in almost all cases.)
In class I usally say “you need to add a small word” or draw a ^ and say "入っている” if they still don’t get it.
Sometimes it’s a preposition and sometimes it’s an article.
Textbook calls ‘a’ and ‘the’ 冠詞, ‘with’ and ‘for’ 前置詞
1 Like