A couple months ago, I was close to finishing N2 here on Bunpro. At that point I was doing Bunpro about 30 min a day and adding new grammar every two to three days, sometimes more. I time my reviews and don’t typically add new grammar until reviews are done. Had a bit of a detour and spent a month in Japan late last year. During that whole time, and about two weeks prior I didn’t use Bunpro once which was the longest stint I had ever gone without using it. (About 6 weeks) Over the past couple years I pretty much used it daily with my longest streak being over 600 days. When I finally sat down to do some reviews a couple months ago, my reviews were in the hundreds. I thought, no big deal, I’ll just get through them all and continue where I left off, but it wasn’t as easy as I expected. I realized that while I hadn’t forgotten the grammar per se, I was far from being efficient at it, much less mastering it. So, a decision had to be made.
Resetting both N3 and N2 grammar was not the easiest thing to do. From a purely vain standpoint, watching my level go from mid 80s to mid 60s was, how do I put it? It felt like starting off a game with all your power ups, and then losing them at the beginning of the campaign, only to be left with your basic gear. I had reset individual grammar before, but never a whole level.
The next step was coming to terms as to why I was doing it in the first place. Perhaps the most deceiving thing about specific SRS programs is that they sometimes make you believe that you know more than you think you do. Marking things like vocabulary and grammar as “expert” and “master”. While I understand why it’s done and can be a point of motivation and progress for many, for me personally I often times don’t feel like a master. If that differs for you, I’m not here to tell you that you’re wrong, I’m just letting you know how I feel about it. If I can’t properly use that grammar in a situation without thinking much about it, or easily recognize it out in the wild, I am not a master of that grammar in my eyes. I might be a master of filling in the blank in Bunpro, but for me practical application is where it’s at. There is no point if I cannot reproduce the sentence on my own.
Okay, so what are the actual benefits of resetting?
For me, it was revisiting grammar that had been buried deep within the “mastered” section of the algorithm, electing to not show up for another year or so. On top of the fact that Bunpro has changed a lot since I first started. The grammar has been re-ordered in a way that is better categorized IMO, many explanations have been added, and the system is now more specific about what it want us to answer, (way less guessing). So overall, it’s a much more enjoyable experience the second time around. If you’re on the fence about it, you can at least take solace in the fact that it won’t take as much time this time around, and in many ways it’s a good thing to truly understand where you’re at.
Not really utilizing grammar much outside of Bunpro
This is 100% a failure on my part. My goal on most days was to just do Bunpro, Anki Vocab and immerse. While I will say that my grammar has improved by leaps and bounds since I started using Bunpro, it’s not really where I would like it to be. Part of this is not embracing what works for me personally, learning how to say something, and being able to recall it without any help or clues. Early on when I was starting to get serious about Japanese, I went through all of Pimsleur (there were only 3 Units total at the time) and I felt as if though my Japanese had skyrocketted. I was talking, having basic conversations, and deceiving (uknowingly) people into beleiving that I knew more than I really did. I thought, it can only go up from here, but I also got caught in a loop of books, apps, and bad advice when it came to Japanese. That really slowed me down I feel. Apart from the fact that Pimsleur only goes up to 5 units which will in the end go over only a very small fraction of Japanese. Apart from being more proactive with the grammar I’m reviewing, I’m also taking 2 sentences from each grammar point and adding them to an Anki deck, so that I can recall the sentence from the English translation first. This forces me to reproduce the sentence instead of just reading it. As a result, over the past couple weeks I do find myself thinking in Japanese more. I’m also finding myself translating the English I hear into Japanese without actually thinking about it. While some may be against this method, I’ve seen in several interviews that this is what happens to polyglots when they are deep within learning a language, they will be auto-translating in their heads from their native language to their target language. For the record, I don’t do this vice-versa. When I watch native content, I very rarely translate or think about English. Only when I don’t understand something or need to explain something to my partner.
But, would you actually recommend reseting?
Thats a good question and the truth is that such a thing will vary by person. If your goal is to only “finish” Bunpro, then probably not. If you feel confident that you can utilize all the grammar that you have studied previously, then probably not. But if you feel you keep getting answers wrong, or feel you have forgotten a lot of the grammar, it may be a good option.
And I’ll be frank, I know that there will be those that will say that resetting is a waste of time. That there is no point going over grammar that you have already learned, and that it will hurt progress and what not. And trust me, I know where you’re coming from. In years of hosting local study sessions, I was sometimes baffled by how often people went back to learn basics and re-treaded old material. This was typically after a long hiatus though. Still, there is something that I wonder about that logic. If I watched an episode of an anime or a drama that I liked, and I just happened to understand most or all that episode, in most immersion circles that would be considered a verifiable win, a test of what I’ve learned and not a waste of time even if I didn’t learn anything new. But if I go over material I’ve learned before, some of them will very likely consider that a waste of time, even though I’m reviewing and re-enforcing like I do when I’m inputting. For me going through an N-Level in Bunpro is like replaying an old game like Symphony of the Night. I remember the general flow of the game, the castle walls, the enemy movement. It all seems familiar to me, but I’m also learn something new each time. I get better at it each time and an able to get through bosses easier and find items quicker. I might even try something I haven’t tried before. At times I might still get my ass handed to me by a boss whose pattern I couldn’t remember, but it goes to show that I didn’t really master it in the first place and need to go back to that save point and plan a new strategy.
Reseting has allowed me to go back, take a closer look at the structure, and vocabulary of sentences, and further solidify the grammar I previously learned but was far from mastering. It’s also made my overall daily studies more enjoyable as I don’t have so many reveiws stacked on top of each other. A couple months after having reset, I can say thats it’s a decision that I don’t regret. It’s made balancing Wanikani, Anki, reading, watching content and speaking much more manageable. It’s like a second run in a game like a mentioned before.
Should Bunpro have a new game plus? Even harder sentences and more complicated structures where you have to recognize 2 grammar points? Re-enforcing all that grammar you learned in a new way? Just a thought.
