I started studying kanji lately and spending less time on grammar, so most of my time on Bunpro is spent reviewing. I find that I forget a lot of grammar points, and my method to deal with that is to add them to my crams for a while until I’m comfortable with them again. I’ve finished N3 and have just dipped my toes into N2.
I’ve seen a lot of people say that they’ve reset and restarted learning grammar on Bunpro at some point. I’m considering doing it myself. So what are the benefits to doing that? Is it a good idea?
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My personal opinion is that any time you question if you should reset something it means that you should absolutely reset it. You’re not racing against the clock or against other people. Focus on understanding everything to the best of your ability, even if it means relearning some things.
As for kanji, you can speed it up by just focusing on vocab. Learn the kanji as a consequence of learning the vocab.
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Was almost same boat as you. I took a year off bunpro around the start of N2 to focus on wanikani(kanji). After I finished wanikani. I reset bunpro around February, now I am just starting N3 (i am taking it very slow, I believe you can reach it faster than this.). To me I believe it was worth it. To reinforce what I know or what I thought I knew.
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Personally I prefer to just keep SRS level as is, get additional practice through ghosts, and use the free time to study additional grammar sources and read native material.
Recently I’ve started a Marumori free trial. They have long-form articles on N3 grammar with plenty of examples, which are quite nice as a reinforcement.
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Honestly, I am a big fan of the reset. I care more about learning than my stats so I find myself actually resetting quite often (I am completely fine with stacking hundreds of reviews too). I actually just reset both N5 and N4 so I can work through them again with a listening and full sentence comprehension focus. Then I can start diving into N3 in the new year.
So yes, do the reset.
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If you’re already on N3 I think you’ll get a lot more out of immersing and looking up any grammar you’ve forgotten. It will be difficult. You will forget things. It’s okay, I still look up grammar sometimes that I consistently get right during SRS sessions. You gain implicit knowledge from immersion by seeing things in new contexts and you get to reinforce any existing vocabulary or kanji knowledge if you’re reading. It also has the added benefit of making it easier to pick up new vocab and kanji in your SRS systems because you’ll have seen them many times before.
Don’t fear the language. Do your reviews and immerse a lot.
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If you have this doubt, I think you should absolutely go for it, it is no big deal.
If things get too easy/slow just readjust the levels manually on the concerned point, so your level will be appropriately realigned while it apparently isn’t now.
In my opinion it is a positive thing to do, the gamification/leveling should never take over as our tendency would be to take it too seriously obviously.
I have done a few grammar / vocab resets and never regreted it.
I’m going to slightly dissent on this thread and encourage you to never reset, barring extreme circumstances like taking a year off from language learning or something similar.
If you’re forgetting Bunpro grammar points from the N5-N3 levels, you shouldn’t take that as a sign to reset, but as a sign to dramatically increase your outside reading, writing, speaking and listening of native-level Japanese. Everything from N5-N3 are pretty commonly used, so simply immersing functions as a daily “review” where you get exposed to all of these grammar points over and over again.
The good news is, once you’ve hit the N3 mark, you’ve learned all the basic grammar points of modern Japanese, and should be able to work your way through basically any Japanese text equipped with a dictionary! I would especially recommend reading through novels, short stories, essay collections, magazines and the like. Those will definitely drill you on the formal, literary or unusual grammar points that you might be forgetting if you only focus on spoken Japanese.
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I actually reset N3 and N2 grammar after spending a month in Japan and realizing that my grammar actually wasn’t that great, lol. It’s a humbling experience when you realize that all your anime, manga, and magazines can’t talk back to you or put you on the spot like real conversions do.
Having re-added N3 and about a quarter through N2, I do see benefits and am going through it faster than before.
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I personally don’t understand why you’d reset. It feels like you’d just stay in a state of beginner hell forever. I’d recommend cramming the points you seem to be missing, and read the third party explanation resources. Also highly recommend trying extensive reading with like tadoku if you can bear some slightly boring stories. Speaking of which don’t forget there’s reading practice on Bunpro for each lesson set.
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Thank you all for your thoughtful input. I’ve decided not to reset at this time. Also, thanks to the encouragement of some I’m going to try to start reading native content. I think I’ve been going at a slow enough pace that resetting is not necessary, but maybe I’ll reconsider it in the future.
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The reason I suggest the reset is that I find the volume of knowledge testing you get from bunpro is way higher than what I’d get from my reading so it is not one or the other to me, I see them as complementary.
Without the reset my bunpro practice fades naturally, with the resets I have maintained this volume.
The fact it gets easier is not really a problem, as it is just a mass reviewing tool to me (I use bunpro to review stuff I learned outside almost exclusively personnaly)
Now I would agree reading is the priority indeed, reset is maybe a luxury when you have lots of study time.
I’ve definitely reset things like WaniKani, KaniWani, BunPro, Kanji Study etc. multiple times and it can be helpful mentally for basically giving myself a clean slate. For me the benefit is it sort of relieves the pressure, I guess, the uncertainty of “do I know this or not?” by just stating “nope, as far as I’m concerned I don’t.” The downside is that you will be slowing down your progress, but as others have said, this isn’t a race. I’d just caution against using resets as a sort of escape every time you feel overwhelmed.
Sometimes I do just power through and keep things as they are. It’s really up to you. One thing I do find helpful if I’m feeling uncertain on old grammar points, I’ll actually just write out the whole reference page by hand. Not sure why, but it seems to help if it’s more on a case-by-base basis. Obviously this does take time though, but so does a full reset!