Related Grammar Synonyms need to be updated

rustx · February 15, 2025, 6:24am

This gets worse the further you get into Bunpro.

Early on in N5/N4 this is handled relatively well, most points have a few related grammar points and its generally always aware during review time when you’ve used one that was close but not quite right. But the further you progress into Bunpro the worse this gets and soon you find that the majority of grammar points are taught with apparently 0 related synonyms.

It gets frustrating later on as half of the time the review grammar points know of the synonym EVEN if its not listed as related, with the other half of the time the grammar point flat out marking synonyms as being wrong even if the meaning is almost identical.

This problem is especially bad with N3 onwards, a lot of the time if you have a N3 point but have progressed into N2, that N3 point is completely unaware of the new N2 synonyms you have learned and will flat out mark it wrong even when the correct word type (EG noun / verb) is used correctly but its just not the exact grammar point that is wanted.

This all culminates at N1 level where it is by far the worst and many grammar points are unaware of even other N1 points. I’ve ran into this example which forced me into making this thread.

These two grammar points are completely identical in meaning, the difference is the target they are used with. One of them straight mentions the other however these are still NOT listed as related, and reviews CAN completely flat out mark it wrong if you use one another instead of hinting.

veritas_nz · February 15, 2025, 7:04am

Will chime in on this quickly:

RE related grammar on the Grammar Point pages:
You’ll be happy to know that the Related Grammar system is gonna get a clean out.
One of our Content Team members is gonna go through each Grammar Point manually and update the related items.

RE related grammar during the Quiz:
Synonym-hell can (at the very least) be fixed by us adding more of the detailed yellow hints that guide you toward the right answer.
We’ve been much better at responding to and actioning on feedback recently, so suggestions are way more likely to get added.

rustx · February 15, 2025, 8:10am

Thanks for the quick response!

Those two things would greatly help.

In addition to those or maybe its already planned, at the time of reviews I feel the related/synonym hell could be helped a lot if it wasn’t so strict when the meaning is similar. Theres some examples where you’ll even be provided a hint telling you how to fix it but then at the same time it will hard mark your answer wrong in red.

casual · February 15, 2025, 11:39am

A pass of reviewing synonyms and adding new yellow hints would definitely be welcome.

I also think it might be interesting to communicate 2 different “fail” states to the user: fail because attempted answer is just not in the system, and fail because it IS in the system as a wrong answer (with a note: ungrammatical, or different meaning).

Currently even if I feel like my answer makes a correct sentence, if it’s marked as wrong, it is much easier to just backspace it and try a different option, than to try and submit a question/feedback about it. So in the end I cannot distinguish why it was wrong: is it a valid synonym that’s not in the system, or is the meaning different from the one requested. To be fair, sometimes I might be trying words and constructions that are not even a grammar item on Bunpro.

Alerean · February 15, 2025, 11:22pm

This seems like it’ll go a long way towards improving it. I’ve had similar situations where I’ve gone through some different possible answers only to finally have a message guiding me towards an abbreviated version or something totally different to what I was attempting (despite not asking for that in the question or hint etc ).

nminer · February 16, 2025, 12:56am

Looking forward to this!

Not sure if this is already on the Content team’s radar, but one thing I do want to mention as an additional pain point is that currently a lot of the nuance hints presented when you get a question wrong aren’t particularly helpful since the nuances themselves weren’t taught in the grammar point so the first time you’re exposed to a grammar point’s nuance is when getting it wrong and being presented with a hint. I don’t have a screenshot of a specific grammar point, but for example I’ve noticed hints like “stronger nuance” or “weaker nuance” used a lot, but then those nuances are never mentioned in the grammar point’s explanation in relation to other synonyms.

veritas_nz · February 18, 2025, 11:54pm

A pass of reviewing synonyms and adding new yellow hints would definitely be welcome.

I also think it might be interesting to communicate 2 different “fail” states to the user: fail because attempted answer is just not in the system, and fail because it IS in the system as a wrong answer (with a note: ungrammatical, or different meaning).

Currently even if I feel like my answer makes a correct sentence, if it’s marked as wrong, it is much easier to just backspace it and try a different option, than to try and submit a question/feedback about it. So in the end I cannot distinguish why it was wrong: is it a valid synonym that’s not in the system, or is the meaning different from the one requested. To be fair, sometimes I might be trying words and constructions that are not even a grammar item on Bunpro.

This is actually a project that I believe is underway.

Sometimes you’ll get a hint that shows in red instead of orange.
These are answers marked explicitly as wrong.

I fully agree with you that this is a pretty frustrating part of using Bunpro.
Will see if I can get this project bumped up a bit more in terms of priority.