Title is quite weird but bear with me: I’ve been studying japanese for quite a bit, and while I’ve had ebbs and flows and some really bad years, I’ve started again and have been able to rekindle old habits.
As a baseline, I usually study grammar via immersion and then writing down notes and checking them again + I have a teacher I have classes with every week so I also get grammar (and general) lessons from her.
So I guess my question is if bunpro’s SRS system would still be helpful, or if my current method of mostly immersion might be better. I know its silly to ask this on the bunpro forums since it’ll be mostly people who are biased towards bunpro, but I feel like hearing everyone’s experiences would help me in my decision
Also yes I’m trying out the 30 day trial :] refreshing some n5 stuff I still mess up, but I already got to lv 28 from mastering a buncha cards lol i feel like I’m cheating
I started Bunpro at N3 and find it very useful. I think you can’t adequately reinforce/learn vocabulary from immersion alone. As for grammar, I think it’s also a useful reinforcement.
As a more advanced user I like to go through my reviews with an extension that allows me to record and play back my own voice, it really helps now when I understood that my 訛り is somewhat worse then I’d like it to be at this point.
I’m not doing much though.
I also think I’d benefit from going though all Bunpro stuff with fill in the blank, as it would make me think of all the cool construction I could be using during my conversations.
What I also do with them is just take grammar that comes at me and try to use it with my words
I feel like it’s up to each individual. I see above that someone feels like vocabulary can’t be reinforced from immersion alone. I vehemently disagree with that, even as someone who does japanese very casually. I remember words from immersive contexts much better than the vocabulary SRS queues teach me (such as mathematical terms, where I studied for about 10 seconds, because I intended to learn math with them rather than Japanese).
But these SRS queues are an important bootstrap for the language, it’s hard to pick them from immersion from absolutely nothing.
Now, I broke up this message into two because I want to make these two points very separate;
Regarding grammar, I treat it very impersonally. I don’t really base nor treat the explanations as gospel, I obtain my meaning from the exercises alone. Bunpro is the easiest available collection of this much grammar, however, calling it “grammar” isn’t really it anymore – because after a certain point, it’s memorizing expressions. And that’s still useful, of course, no shame to admit it. It’s definitely the most valuable point I got from Bunpro. And due to it’s relatively low price (for an educational tool), I find it worth it for that reason, it’s convenient.
I did say adequately reinforced 
like somethings will be reinforced, others wont, and you’ll miss out on things that dont appear frequently enough in the media you consume imo
I still don’t agree. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. SRS queues give me a light reinforcement but it’s never adequate. It takes me reading words over and over across different examples to ever reach the level I consider “adequate”, as in, I understand the feeling this word will convey. All these words I am using right now weren’t bestowed to me through Anki or a similar interface
I mean thats fair enough if you feel that way, I can’t really argue with your personal experience, but as a light aside, how children learn and how adults learn is massively different so assuming you’re a native English speaker, not having learned English through Anki isn’t really an argument against SRS imo, but I respect where you’re coming from. I do think we are speaking at cross purposes though, since I never said immersion wasn’t also necessary. I think lighter SRS and heavier immersion is the ideal combo, especially for intermediate to advanced. I just think SRS is necessary to grease the wheels on the immersion machine basically, and fill in important gaps.
to be clear, im not sure if id use bunpro for vocab. anki has been doing just fine, there isnt much that i need for a word other than the sentence it came from, some audio and the definition.
it hasnt really worked for grammar for me though… yes bunpro is also srs but it seems to offer a more inclusive package to learn grammar (i could just manually do all that but making anki decks beyond quick mining tools is def out of my scope)
ahhh okay. Kinda unrelated, but I’m curious, what kind of deck do you use? Do you make it yourself? I live in awe of dedicated vocab miners so I’m always curious about people’s set up!
TBH I think Bunpro just for grammar is maybe not as worth it if you don’t plan to use it for vocab as well, like it is helpful tho but I wouldn’t have bought a lifetime sub for it just on the strength of grammar alone
Personally, what’s worked best for me as someone who started learning N3 and is now reviewing for N2 is just…using both. I go through and learn my grammar on here, do those reviews, and also input my vocab from immersing on here and also check grammar points I don’t know yet. It’s just extra reinforcement on both sides. I make decks for whatever I am immersing in and add those to my queue here. But this is also as someone who doesn’t stick with Anki but has stuck with Bunpro lol
I’m finishing up a frequency deck (kaishi 1.5k) and then after that I have a complete vocab/sentence mine setup ready so that I can just grab whatever vocab I want from the things I interact with!
People squabble over frequency decks but tbh sticking with one regardless of flaws and nitpicks will propel you to be able to i+1 a lot of stuff out here. I just like kaishi deck because it uses irasutoya images and I think its cute
Agreed! Consistency is def the most important factor
I started using it post N3 and wish I had started sooner. I find the SRS for grammar really helpful on top of immersion, especially for points that I struggle particularly with. The grammar can be a bit wonky sometimes, but still really helpful. I’ve tried using Bunpro for vocab, but I much prefer using Anki (I instead use it as bank to get a rough estimate of words I know/am learning throughout the N levels).
Honestly, I wouldn’t really think about the level on Bunpro. It ends up being pretty arbitrary depending on how you use the site. It is a number that goes up, but it’s more a measure of how much you use Bunpro than your knowledge of Japanese.
Bunpro is strongest at grammar; learning, example sentences, connection to other resources and SRS. It also has vocabulary, JLPT practice tests, reading practice at lessons levels and a few other things.
I think Bunpro has a very good offering in general, with the stories, the jlpt practice exams, and all that jazz that is available beside grammar.
The grammar itself is not better or worse than any other grammar source, maybe different. Some of the explanations are so complex I almost cry and when I look up the same grammar point in another source, it turns out it can be explained in much simpler terms.
My biggest problem is the SRS. It is annoyingly lagging behind Anki and I feel it hinders my learning process. The annoying hints and the lack of FSRS have their own thread on the forum, so that should be indicative of something.
If you do the free trial, just use it everyday a lot, not just for grammar but vocab etc too, and by the end of the 30 days, you will likely feel if it is worth it for you or not.