Thoughts about the "I know this" button?

Bunpro
#1

Just bought lifetime as a new user, so I can force myself to get better at grammar. Already proved I could stick with WaniKani so I didn’t think this would be too different. :smiley:

However, I’m having a little bit of an internal dilemma. Its great that Bunpro lets you burn grammar items by clicking the “I know this” button, and I’ve been taking Japanese classes for over a year now so I’ve already learned pretty much all of N5 (I think) and some N4. I plan to read through all the lessons for N5 but I feel like putting all of them in review will overwhelm and bore me out with things I (think that) I might already be confident with. However I keep thinking on the off chance that putting all the stuff I already know into reviews, it could possibly help me on topics that I’ve already gone over but didn’t know I needed more practice on or maybe Bunpro will teach me something new about it, but at the same time I want to learn new stuff.

So, what should I do? Or, maybe a better question if you came into Bunpro with a similar experience, what did you do? I’m honestly thinking of just marking “I know this” on mostly everything I already know, save for probably some more recent grammar points. I don’t want to be swamped with 100+ boring reviews from N5 and spend 6 months or however long it is to 12/12 burn them, even though maybe a couple of them may help me.

Another idea I thought of is that it would be helpful if you could manually set the SRS level for a specific grammar point to see if you need more practice with the thing you already think you know.

For example, if I already learned もらう and I want to make sure I know it but don’t want to get so many reviews for it, I could manually set it to like 10/12 so one day in the future it would pop up in reviews, and if I really knew how to use it from what I learned before Bunpro, I would only need to pass it one more time after that to burn it and be confident.

This way I could manually put all the N5 grammar on a high SRS like 10/12 so I can start learning new things today and have more interest while also not worrying about all the N5 grammar I “skipped” because I know they’ll pop up a few more times to see if I actually was fine with it, instead of getting probably hundreds of extra reviews per week that I might not need and would bore me to death. It would be great if there was a userscript for what I mentioned, or even better if it already exists and I don’t know about it :grin:

I honestly don’t know if people would understand me (the fact that not completely throwing something to the side that I think I know would give me a peace of mind) or if this is the wrong way to approach SRS even if I’ve been studying for a year. Anyways, I’m open to thoughts about my ideas, and I’m looking forward to use Bunpro in my daily SRS routine along with WK!

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#2

I think you can somewhat simulate this though through cram. If you were to put all of N5 into cram you can see if there’s any grammar you might be struggling with. This way you can sift out any stragglers. Then there’s two options. You could just put it in starting at stage 1, or you could bookmark all the ones you feel iffy on and then cram test them again after a certain interval you feel would be good - and repeat the process (removing any bookmarks for grammar you feel good on - or adding grammar you missed twice in a row to stage 1 SRS).

Another suggestion I might have is you add in x amount of N5 grammar in with your actual new grammar points. This way you don’t get a huge wave of N5 reviews all at once. Like for example, if you were adding in 5 new N4 grammar points for the day, you could also add in 5 N5 grammar points. In reality, if you know those N5 grammar points really well, it wouldn’t really feel like you’re doing much more work since those reviews should be easy for you.

Anyways, those are just some suggestions. I really like the idea of being able to choose what interval to have the reviews start at, so it’d be really cool if this feature was added.

4 Likes
#3

Began typing but @josh already beat me to the punch on what I wanted to say. I would personally do Cram of N5 so you can do as many as you like then close and save your progress for another day. Even with our old and wonky Cram system, this was what a lot of people did in your situation and it seemed to have worked out well for them. Can only imagine how much easier it’d be now with the new Cram 2.0.

Just my personal opinion, but I think the thing that leaves me a bit ‘meh’ on custom SRS progress is because of how many points have unique nuances that benefit from studying it at the very beginning. If someone does do bulk adds then it’s probably for the better to stagger it so you’re not having a ton of reviews each day. Again, just my opinion!

Either way, welcome welcome! Enjoy your stay :santa:

Oh FWIW I crammed N5 last night for some bug testing + misc things and it was a quick (depending where you are in your studies I suppose) yet enjoyable experience. Picked up a few neat tidbits in the writeups since they were written after I had already finished N5!

2 Likes
#4

@josh @EdBunpro Thanks for the tips! Didn’t think to use the cram feature since everything here is new to me. Tried it and got 84% on N5. I thought about it and it’s probably beneficial for me to start from the beginning with no “I know this” because even if I know something, even if it’s really easy, practicing it even more I think will make me faster at comprehension and prevent me from making simple mistakes in the future. I started from the beginning reading all the N5 grammar, albeit at a really fast pace. Did ~40 today and I’ll probably continue and get all the N5 grammar into my reviews in a couple days.

I hope I don’t crash and burn though, but if my thinking is correct, there are 126 N5 grammar points so if worse comes to worst it’ll be 126 fast and easy reviews in a day. I think that’d be not too hard to handle since I’m used to WaniKani, having thousands of items in SRS and some days with 200+ reviews, but here with the 126 N5 grammar points I don’t think it’ll end up too crowded with the new grammar I’ll be learning.

2 Likes
#5

Glad to hear it kind of all worked out for you in the end! I totally agree with your reasoning, and I think the added reading comprehension will help out along the way as well.

Of course it’s totally up to you, but another route could be to slightly lower the amount you add per day and use that extra time to go through all the example sentences for a point. For most of N5 it’ll be quite basic given the content, but it’s a practice I’ve found to be really useful personally. This way I think your avg reviews won’t be as high. That’s kind of the beauty of a lifetime sub - you’re free to take things at whatever speed works best for you hahaha.

If you continue to use Cram please feel free to reach out if you have any suggestions or comments! We just completely redid it and launched the beta a few weeks ago. Actually speaking of which I just realized something - in your settings, are you signed up for beta access? Also, do you have the Cram 2.0 setting enabled? Just want to triple check you’re having the best experience possible.

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#6

Yep, had Cram 2.0 and beta enabled since I started. Speaking of, I think I found a bug :stuck_out_tongue:

With auto-expand info option turned on, a couple times it would auto expand to the wrong grammar point, this was on cram with N5 selected, so with the ~120 cram reviews there were 2-3 auto expands where it would expand to the wrong grammar point. Just thought I’d let you know. Other than that it’s been a great experience so far!

Now I haven’t reviewed that many times yet, but the only critique I have is based of something I’ve read from others talking about Bunpro, but more unique sentences for reviews. From what I’m gathering, reviews and crams pull only from example sentences. The thing is that if I’ve gone through the sentences, the review for it tends to not feel “fresh” as sometimes I recognize the sentence and might just unintentionally remember the sentence instead of the actual grammar point I’m trying to learn, and I assume it’s also a problem if you get an SRS drop and see the same sentence over again, eventually just memorizing the sentence instead of how to use the grammar point. Randomly generated sentences might be too difficult to implement, but maybe just add a bunch of hidden sentences to each point only shown in review. Again I’ve just started and don’t know much about the platform so correct me if I’m wrong!

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#7

I purchased my lifetime subscription in August. I’ve been studying for over 20 years and passed the N4 in December, and I decided to just do the N5 and N4 grammar points anyway. I finished going through all of them (For N5 I did around 5 per day and for N4 only 2 per day) and am waiting until the new year to begin N3.

Unless you either do them all at once, or do a lot of the vocabulary decks (I also finished the N5 and N4 vocabulary decks doing 8 items per day) it’s not really a lot of reviews. These days I get around 60-80 reviews per day and I finish them in around 20 minutes. I also do them without looking at the hints/English, which gives me good practice reading. Hopefully this year I can learn all of the N3 grammar and by August, feel confident enough to think about attempting the N3.

My recommendation is that you go through them all and if it ends up being too much, you can just burn the ones you’re really confident about.

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