SRS elements of Bunpro poorly implemented?

Bunpro
#1

Hi all I’m relatively new to Bunpro (about a week) and I feel pretty disappointed with the SRS elements of “Reviews” for Bunpro.

In particular, in Anki, if you have 100 vocab terms to review, and if you get one wrong, it won’t ask you again immediately nor after you finish reviewing the other 99, but rather very soon (1-10 minutes depending on settings and whether it’s a new word).

I don’t see any options for this in Bunpro. Instead, it seems that when a question is marked wrong, it gets put toward the end of the “stack”. This works well if you are doing 5-10 reviews, but terribly if you are trying to review 60-100 grammar points. It feels you don’t see the point again for ages. Ideally I’d like to see any wrong point within 5-7 reviews. If I get 5-7 answers wrong in a row, I should be basically be cycling through those answers until I start getting them right.

Because I don’t get to see “wrong” answer topics again until dozens of reviews later, by which point I’ve forgotten my original error, it’s gotten to the point where I feel I can get more practice by backspacing my answer and typing in the “correct” answer (that I just saw), rather than admitting that I am incorrect. But this is also a pretty ineffectual learning experience, because then the topic does not come up again at all for that review session.

I get that Bunpro is maybe intended to slowly learn 5 grammar points every day, so you only get 15 reviews or something on any given day. But for any lapsed user or intermediate Japanese learner (who already knew some grammar going in), this feels like such a slog.

In addition the Review system feels quite buggy, at one point it was counting down the grammar points in the top right, R55, R54, R53, etc. Then it started going into negatives? R-1, R-2, R-3? Which took away a lot of my sense of completion as I was really excited to be “done”. Then I reloaded the page and suddenly I had another 30+ reviews to do, that it never mentioned before?

I’ve also experienced severe slowdown but it’s been mentioned in other threads. For what it’s worth, I live in Japan so maybe that’s causing some of the server communication issues, but I imagine a fair chunk of the users also live in Japan (or East Asia) so it might be worth investigating.

Honestly it also doesn’t seem like the answers I keep getting right are being spaced out correctly either (for proper SRS). Why do I keep seeing the grammatical points that I get right again and again? Shouldn’t they be pushed back at least a few days? And is there a way to visualize or customize the time information (for example, I want to know how long until I see each grammatical point again / which date each grammatical point will be up for review akin to ANKI).

It seems like Bunpro has some nice elements, for example I love the different grammar paths and the collections of articles on each grammatical point. But does anyone have advice on either:

  1. Maybe I’m wrong and the incorrect grammar points DO show up within 5-10 reviews? (It certainly doesn’t seem this way.)

  2. Bunpro settings that can fix these issues? (I looked but maybe I missed them)

  3. Failing that, alternatives for Japanese grammar SRS? I am trying Duolingo and a grammar-focused Anki deck but happy to hear others.

In general my primary issues seem quite “fundamental” so if the developers haven’t implemented them yet I doubt they plan to. But I sincerely hope I’m wrong because I had really high hopes for Bunpro, it seemed like exactly what I wanted at first.

2 Likes
#2

If you are already pretty ok with grammar and don’t want to see grammar point so often, then good start maybe turning ghost reviews off. I did so myself and it help quite a bit. (not that I am “pretty ok with grammar” but it serves my goals better)

#3

You are correct, they do get put toward the end of the stack. If you want to do them partway through, there is an option in upper right drop down to “wrap-up” your session which will make you go over the missed ones before going to the summary page. That would be a work around if you have an excessive number of reviews but want to clear ones you missed earlier in the session.

As for negative reviews, that is indeed a bug. It seems that during your reviews more grammar became available resulting in the negative numbers.

For the SRS timing, Bunpro does it similarly to Wanikani where you see it more than once a day for your first day but gradually spaces it out from there, rather than like Anki which shows it to you at most once a day.

Thanks for the feedback! I will look into implementing a change to cycle through missed reviews earlier on in a session.

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#4

I agree there should be an option to immediately rewrite the answer without getting it marked as correct. Just looking at the correct answer isn’t enough to pound it into my brain, I need to get it under my fingers to better remember the issue. I like that the sentence gets moved to the end, because I want to learn the grammar point, not just memorize the particular sentence, but a space where you can rewrite the correct answer before moving on (without using OOPS) would be fantastic.

In the absence of such a feature, I use Notepad, though any word processor would work. This allows me to type out the correct answer, compare it to my wrong answer, and even go through the steps needed to properly conjugate it so I understand what is going on. Then when it comes up again, I’ve hopefully forgotten the sentence and context, but have a much better chance of being able to work through the answer.

#5

Did you know you can mark grammar as known too? If something comes up that you already know (or don’t want to learn) then you can go into the grammar info and choose ‘I know this’ so you don’t have to review that card again.

#6

Thank you for the advice, I will try turning Ghost Reviews to off. I’ve read a few topics on this in the community and still don’t really understand it. On paper, it sounds like Ghost Reviews is what I would like – more practice on grammatical points I get wrong – but I’m willing to try to get rid of it and see if it helps. Maybe having no ghost reviews will mean the stack becomes more manageable.

Thank you for the advice!

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#7

Thank you for the advice! I didn’t realize you could individually remove cards from the stack.

Although there’s a lot more that I don’t know than I know, I think getting rid of some of the easier content will help make reviews slightly more manageable. But do you happen to know the difference between “I know this” and “Remove from reviews”?

#8

I guess I didn’t want the exact same sentence to reappear, as I agree memorizing sentences is not the goal. But if using Bunpro to learn grammar for the first time, it’s pretty disruptive to see it only once, then again only after 90 reviews. It’s almost guaranteed not to “stick” at that pace.

Regarding typing the correct answer out, maybe you could type the whole thing in bunpro, then just add an extra character (like A or B or “ha” or what have you), then enter it again, knowing it’s incorrect? Or does even doing that still erase it from the review?

Anyways thank you for the reply!

#9

Thank you for confirming my suspicion about putting it at the end of the stack!

For the “Wrap-Up” feature, is that the “FINISH SESSION” option? I see that in the upper left drop down, but no “wrap up” in the upper right.
I have been very afraid to click “Finish session” because I assumed it would remove or mark all the outstanding reviews as “complete”? (Otherwise, it’d be no different from just closing the browser tab, I thought.)

So if I have 80 reviews, I finish 20 of them and get 10 wrong, then click “Finish Session”, does that mean I get to see the 10 wrong again, then can immediately resume the 60 unfinished reviews? If I get 5 wrong out of the 10 in the “wrap-up”, do they get added to the 60 unfinished reviews?

I do appreciate your advice on a workaround and apologize for the nuanced questions, but I don’t want to accidentally mess up the review schedule too much.

Thank you also for letting me know why the counter became negative!

I greatly appreciate your responsiveness regarding the possibility of cycling through missed reviews earlier on in a session. However, rather than being a separate review window / button you have to click, could it please be an option to move the incorrect review topic some number of topics away? Then have this be an option on your profile page?

Like : “How long until you see an incorrectly answered review topic again?”

  • Immediately (puts it as the next 2-5 cards)
  • Soon (puts it 5-10 cards away)
  • Long (puts it 10-30 cards away)
  • At the end (puts it at the end of the stack, current practice / default if you wish)

I’m not sure exactly what technology you are using for the backend, but this would be somewhat trivial to implement in an array in Javascript. (Just options that alter how to randomize where to insert an element into the array.)

The reason I ask for this is because going to a session with ONLY my incorrect reviews means that I know the answer must be something I recently got wrong. This limits the number of possibilities.

For example if I get “ka ra” wrong, but not yet encountered “no de”, if I go to a session with only wrong answers, I know that (1) the question must be something I got wrong recently and (2) the right answer is “ka ra” because I didn’t see “no de” yet. But if it’s mixed into the stack along with the yet to be uncovered “no de”, I’d still have to think whether it was a question I got recently wrong.

In general if there were more options / features for “power-users”, I’d love to subscribe. Personally I think it’d also be fine to lock those features out of the 1 month trial (if the concern is that it can be abused to learn too quickly / with multiple accounts). I have no problem paying for learning resources, and the price is already very reasonable.

But if the only meaningful way to use the site is to learn 3 grammatical concepts a day (or else have too many reviews for the current structure) or purely meant ONLY for review of things we’ve already spent hours of practice exercises outside of bunpro, I’m not sure how to work it into my learning cycle.

Thank you for your reply and consideration. I will check back from time to time so please let me know if there is any update.

PS: Sorry I just saw the message about consider replying to several posts at once instead of four separate replies.

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#10

There is one thing you need to keep in mind: BunPro is not a site for learning grammar. It is design to help you check if you remember grammar you learn somewhere else.

If you will try to use it in a way it wasn’t design to, it maybe be a little bit harder to use.

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#11

First, sorry if I didn’t read everything 100% and you said this yourself somewhere. But this would actually be really bad for your memory/learning. Limiting your ‘possible’ responses is the same as cheating SRS. Basically you would be gaming the system to input answers you saw recently, not answers you are ‘learning’.

This is similar to the learned, new, and troubled (green, blue, and red) buttons on Anki. If you see a word and think ‘have I ever seen this before?’, and then look at those buttons and think ‘oh shit I’ve learned it, better think harder’, then you’re not actually learning anything. As soon as you ‘know’ it’s coming, your learning capacity switches off.

#12

… It is definitely a site for learning grammar.

Edit - just as a more comprehensive answer. I couldn’t understand bugger all when I started using Bunpro, and can now read most books with no problem. I only ever used Bunpro, and videos on youtube (when necessary). 9 times out of 10, the description on Bunpro was enough to learn the grammar point.

I would say that Bunpro is a place to ‘learn, and -get an idea- for how grammar works, from which you should refine nuance by reading native material’

4 Likes
#13

“Learn” has quite wide definition. Maybe I should be more precise: it is not design as primary source to get you first “touch” with new grammar point. For that it redirects you to other sites, and it provides you paths that will help you use BunPro with sources design to be you “first interaction” with new grammar (Denki, Tobira, minna, Tae Kim). It is great at making your understanding deeper, but not necessary great best tool to get you first experience with grammar.

And it is not criticism really. That a good thing. It does something other sources are lacking, and don’t try to make just jet another resource just with new layout. It looks that it is deliberated choose: I seen Admin asking if suggested feature is something that is not available on others platform, and it is not then they are not interested in adding it to BunPro.

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#14

I agree 100%, sorry for the confusion. I was writing asking for the incorrect points to be mixed back into the regular deck and NOT a separate session for exactly this reason. The current workaround (as I understand it) is a separate session and I wasn’t clear from BunPro’s admin response, so I was trying to ask for it NOT to be a separate session. I should have reiterated, thanks for helping me clarify.

Isn’t this tomatoes vs tomatoh’s? Where is the line between “learning” and “reviewing”? If you have “learned” something but can’t remember it, have you actually “learned” it?

Put another way, why have a site dedicated to confirming that you already remember something? If the site doesn’t help you learn, what do you want out of it? In particular, Bunpro is certainly not a site that “only checks if you remember grammar you learn somewhere else”. There’s no need for SRS in this case, just a one-off quiz would be sufficient.

It’s also not how bunpro describes itself. From the launch page:

"Bunpro provides a concise roadmap and the resources you need to learn each grammar point.

Bunpro encourages you to internalize grammar through language production and output.

Bunpro reinforces your understanding of grammar by giving you immediate feedback on your answers."

Saying “if you struggle to reinforce due to nuances in the review structure, it means you don’t know the grammar well enough” doesn’t seem in line with this mission statement.

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#15

Sorry for not be precise enough. I already made it more clear what I meant one post up. I am not really interested in debating definitions, so I hope you will be able to understand what I meant without going into that. :hugs:

#16

Okay I just replied to your earlier reply but thank you for expounding.

I understand Bunpro is not a textbook and relies on other sites to teach the basics. But I have no trouble understanding the concept behind certain grammatical rules. It’s mostly about retaining, reinforcing, and employing that knowledge that I hoped to use Bunpro.

But part of that reinforcement is seeing the same point multiple times (that’s what SRS is all about, after all). If you see a topic once, get it wrong, and then not again until 30-60 minutes later (due to 60+ reviews in between), I don’t think that’s good timing for reinforcement. And since I think the fix would (depending on the implementation) be relatively simple without impacting those who prefer to keep the wrong answers till the very end, I don’t think it’s strange to ask for it.

Of course, it’s not my website and Bunpro is free to do whatever they feel is in line with their business model and philosophy. I was just somewhat surprised because so many other elements of the site seem very polished that I thought there would be more flexibility to the core SRS of the website.

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#17

No worries, glad we’re on the same page.

#18

I think for cases like that it is best to use the cram option. There you can get more than one sentance abouth the same grammar point in diffrent sentenses without triggering ghosts.
The wrong answers are still all at the end but the grammar in question has showed up multiple times before you wrap up normaly.
I also use ut for similar gramar points so I learn to destinguish.

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#19

I use “Wrap Up Session” and “Finish Session” all the time.
If you have only made correct answers up to that point, your only option is “Finish Session”, and it will record the progress you’ve made to that point, saving things you haven’t done for your next session.
If you made any incorrect answers, your option will be “Wrap Up Session” (instead of “Finish Session”), and it will review the grammar points you missed in that session. After you answer those points, then it will record and finish your session. If you have ghosts turned on, depending on which setting you choose, some of those incorrect answers will get turned into ghosts, which follow an additional SRS track within the overall SRS – basically giving you many reviews of the same point before returning you to the overall SRS track.

Your option will first be “Wrap Up”. After answering the wrong points again, you’ll get “Finish Session”. You can resume the unfinished reviews by clicking Review (ie. start another session).

If you have ghosts turned on, they’ll get added to your ghost queue. The first ghost review after the “Wrap Up” reviews is 4 hours.

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