There are some of us who like studying vocab though and wouldn’t want this service to be removed
Actually, staff seem to working on vocab a lot and improving the offering all the time.
The main problem is that I’m on a school Ipad, so I can’t download anything on it, and I also need to be able to type in the answer to remember it. Anki is too much work, and while I did try use it, I much prefer Bunpro
I’m not trying to be patronizing, but I am genuinely curious.
Why do you like using it? I’ve tried using it when it was first introduced then later after they made huge updates to it and didn’t find the use of it very beneficial.
For perspective’s sake. Here’s a partial screenshot of my anki deck with the famous 眼科.
Cutoff from the card is a screenshot of where I found it online, it was from a show on Netflix.
This card took half a second to make and I feel is pretty context complete to help with long-term acquisition.
I like it because I’m learning vocab, and I also like inputting the answer by typing it.
Sure, Anki works great for you for learning vocab.
Bunpro works great for me.
Seems to achieve pretty much the same thing to me.
Same for me, i need to type it to remember.
Do you live in Japan? I see this word literally daily when walking about (not that you need to be able to read it). I still agree with the point of this thread though that this word likely doesn’t belong in the N5 deck.
Maybe it is a useful word to know then I’ll keep an eye out hehe
I am only using it right now for my Genki vocab but having said that it makes learning Genki 1 vocab easier so that’s a good thing
I use Anki and Bunpro simultaneously for vocab. The fill in the blank feature that Anki lacks seems to help with retention rate significantly higher than Anki.
This. I find that Bunpro’s fill in the blank helps me with general retention and more specifically “spelling.” Although, for recognizing the kanji specifically, Anki gives me better results. Since I’ve already got Anki set up anyway, it’s pretty trivial to run both.
As someone who recently took (and passed) N5 and N4, I can attest that the “standard” vocab lists of roughly 700 N5 and N4 words does pretty much cover what’s on those tests. The extra words that Bunpro has in these decks, I think they’re (mostly) good and useful words to know…but they’re really not N5/N4 material.
Honestly ive never even come across that word in english before either. so had to search it up what it meant in my own language and yea doesn’t seem like a word i would recommend at the beginner level at all.
but even the kanji themselves are far past n5 right?
Just think of words as words. The moment you determine the difficulty of something, you inhibit your ability to progress.
If you are studying specifically for N5 then I understand, but in the long run you’ll need as many words as you can get to be able to effortlessly use the language.
but even the kanji themselves are far past n5 right?
If you’re studying individual kanji and their readings in a typical order, most definitely yeah. But you’d technically encounter 眼 for the first time in Genki 1 with 眼鏡 (although, you most likely wouldn’t be expected to study it since that word is usually in kana). Words using the on-yomi would appear much less frequently, definitely N1+. Though I’d think a discerning person might be able to put together the meaning of 眼科 if they’d committed things like 眼鏡 and 科学 to memory before. Looks like Bunpro does teach the 眼鏡 and 科学 in it’s kanji form in N5, so I think that’s totally possible…
I wouldn’t say 科 is too far past N5, you’d be exposed to it in Genki I with both 教科書 and 科学 and it’s like grade 2 level kanji for Japanese kids, for a driven individual who is self-studying I don’t think it would be too far-fetched for them to have drilled that one early. That said, most of the words it’s in would technically be more N3-ish and beyond, I think.
I 100% agree with this but I also see OP’s point. I can see how it might do a disservice to a lot of users to simply lump a bunch of seemingly random and situational words in what’s presented as simply a JLPT-focused vocab deck. The description of the decks should probably include something like: “includes all of the most common JLPT N◯ vocab, and words that learners might commonly find in daily life in Japan,” and then mark words that fall outside the scope of the JLPT so users can make a decision whether to focus their time on those. Or simply move those words to a different, broader vocab deck.
I heavily relied on the series of JLPT 単語 books by ask from N4 to N1. Those are JLPT-centric but contained a ton of situational words/phrases for daily life, outside the scope of the tests. It was always clear those words were highly situational, but they were all still related to the overarching themes of each chapter/section so they never felt out of place. I felt they were useful and chose to learn all of them, but I could see how you might choose to ignore them.
This
I usually do a mixture of adding words that I want to learn, and use in my day to day life, e.g. stuff from whatever manga I’m reading or something I keep wanting to say but don’t know how, as well as using the decks to study for the exams, the main problem is if I’m not going to use the word in my day to day life, and its also not even going to be in the N3 test in december. It’s a pain wasting my time stuck on the N5 deck when the words are N2 N1 level and I need to get through N4 and N3 too. Like why do I have to learn 眼科 before 濡れる? I’m going to use the latter far more than the first one so it makes sense to learn it first.
I mean since I know what those kanji mean, it’s easy to understand. However it by no means is an N5 word. Like I rarely see that word in English itself, let alone in Japanese.
It’s not that I can’t learn it or I don’t want to, I’m complaining about how the decks are marketed for the JLPT exams but the words are in the wrong place.
I know 科 and read it at school everyday, great kanji, great to learn relativly early, I think it’s N4 level maybe, and it is possible to learn 眼科, (I’ve already learnt it since I keep having to type it while complaining, in japanese anyway I don’t know/cant remember the english word though) It’s more of the fact that it’s clearly in the wrong deck.
Lots of N1 words aren’t hard and I know them, but I wouldn’t put them in the JLPT N5 deck just because they are easy if they aren’t going to show up in the JLPT N5 exam.
I got some questions wrong in the exam because I hadn’t learnt all the N5 words, because I was busy learning all the random words in the N5 deck.
This was literally my first time in my life seeing this word in english is it different than an optometrist?(or however you spell it)