Self-Study Sentences: How many is too many?

Bunpro
#1

I’ve been having a lot of fun adding sentences with the self-study feature for different grammar.

I’ve been studying Japanese since 2020, and even spent a year abroad, but there’s a lot of gaps in my understanding of Japanese, aka: why things are the way they are. So, I’m starting Bunpro having already taken University courses and interacting with Japanese in the ‘wild.’
I want to take the N2 this winter, and I know that will be a lot of work, so I’ve been adding a lot of self-study sentences whenever I can connect them to a Bunpro grammar point to kind of “meld together” real-world usage of grammar points with the SRS.

I’m just curious how many self-study sentences people typically use. I just started with Bunpro, so I don’t want to overload myself down the road with excessive self-study sentences of old grammar points I know while trying to pick up things I don’t yet.

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#2

I’ve never used the self study sentences (yet). But you can’t really have too many? There’s 12 SRS stages until master, when the grammar point stops appearing in reviews. The reviews cycle through sentences at every stage until srs 12. So I don’t think it’ll keep harassing you until it goes through every sentence you added, just until master. I don’t know how the self study sentences work tho so I can’t say for sure. They seem nice for cram though

#3

Aiming for 1000 self-study sentences.
Why? Because there’s a badge for 1000 self-study sentences, and I just love badges :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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#4

I think the self-study sentences have their own separate SRS that is unrelated to the grammar point’s SRS that they’re added to. For example if you have a grammar point at Seasoned 1 and add a self-study sentence to that grammar point, the self-study sentence is at Beginner 1 (sort of like how ghosts are separate from their grammar point’s SRS)

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#5

I’ve always wondered about this feature. Is there an explanation somewhere that talks about how it works?

#6

You go to the page of a grammar point, for example ていただけませんか, and all the way at the bottom under the pre-configured sentence examples, you will find a self-study sentence section (sorry in advance for the JP screencaps lol but I hope they still help):

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When you click the add new sentence button at the bottom, you will then have to configure your self-study sentence in a specific way so that it works properly when it appears in your reviews (there are explanations under each text field telling you what to do exactly, beware of having to use very specific parenthesis for the furigana, you can copy and paste them from the little blurb underneath the text field):

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Once you’ve saved the sentence and added it to that grammar page, it will start appearing when you do your reviews, with its own SRS stages separate from the grammar point’s SRS stages, so that you can practice this specific sentence. You can find out about it in the Bunpro FAQ at the section “What are Lessons”.

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#7

Wow, thank you so much!

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#8

Ok! So it seems best to just focus on adding sentences that have some other element you want to study alongside the grammar point, rather than adding a ton just as you see them? (Unless it’s a grammar point I’m particularly weak on that could use support in the form of extra sentences?)

#9

I skipped self study sentences for as long as I add new grammar points as I thought it could be distracting but I think it is a great feature.
Sometimes I tend to answer to my grammar reviews almost automatically without properly reading the sentence just because I know instantly the translation from the hint and I want to avoid this bad tendency I have and be fully aware of each sentence instead. So the less reviews the better at this stage.

Now my intention is to use these self study sentences a lot right along with cram reviews when I am done with adding grammar points (very soon ! only 2 left :slightly_smiling_face:)

#10

Depends what’s the best use case for you personally! I don’t think there is a “wrong” way to go about them, ultimately it’s more practice.
For example, you could add a particular sentence you want to practice (asking someone to speak a little slower, like in my example) because you intend on visiting Japan, or a sentence you’ve encountered in the wild (anime or such) that features the grammar point in a way you find confusing, or things like that. I would just be careful about adding too many of them because just like ghosts they can pile up quite quickly since they have their own SRS.

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#11

I forgot that there were badges for self-study sentences! But 1000?! Well, I do love badges and meaningless achievements as well, so I guess I need to start creating more sentences!

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