Update: 2/17 - Decks & Vocab Beta

I’ve been using the vocab deck for a couple days. It’s useful, but I’ve got a few bits of feedback!

  • Should Vocab Reviews also be manual input?

Yes, please - this would feel a lot better to me.

I also noticed a bug, like someone else mentioned, that I was asked to review the same word twice in a single review session. I didn’t get a Bunpro exception like the other user, but I did have to answer the same word twice.

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This is a fantastic addition and has been my #1 request since the start of Bunpro (which apparently has been 4 years since I just got that Four Year Anniversary badge! :laughing: )

For your questions about future features, they are all “nice to have” but I don’t really think they are high priority for now. To me, only two of them should be prioritized. I answer a resounding YES to both of these:

For the last one, I was thinking something like an “Add the vocabulary in these example sentences to your deck” link would be awesome. I am currently going through and doing it manually, so this would save some time.

Thanks again for adding vocabulary. I can’t wait to see what you do with it!

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It would be cool for vocab reviews to reveal Furigana after answering. That way, one can not only see if they got the meaning right but also the reading. I find myself clicking on the vocab almost every time when there aren’t Furigana anyways.

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About the Vocab cards. I already study vocab through other tools.

The thing is that I like when you ask vocabulary in context and with a purpose. Nobody else makes me do that.

Like when you ask for beautiful in “beautiful girl” and I have to write kawaii otoko no ko. I miss that in WaniKani. In wanikani I learn “kawai” but I never have the chance to practice putting that word in context, and I never have to remember to add the last i for the i adjective. So that is something that adds to the experience of learning and practicing vocabulary.

But I don’t like the vocab cards as they are now in Bunpro beta.
I would love vocab/grammar cards if
You tell me to write:"____本 (cheap)" or “____本 (old)” and I have to practice vocabs: expensive, cheap, new, old, my, your, etc. in the context of describing that book.

And if you use my wanikani api key to ask me vocab/kanjis that I have already learnt from them … that would be a dream come true XD hahaha!

When you use the vocab in context, you need the grammar for it. You need the vocab and the conjugation, or a preposition or a suffix … you name it. That’s something that I expect to see in Bunpro one day in the future. I don’t expect bunpro to be an anki, wanikani, memrise substitute for vocab, … I expect bunpro to teach me vocab the way only bunpro can do … in sententes, with context and with grammar rules that apply to the vocab.

Said that, the vocab card sample sentences and explanations are awesome.
Actually I think grammar cards and vocab cards aren’t a different thing. When asking for grammar about i-adjectives you ask me to write “kawaii” … so just adding a “vocab tab” next to the “grammar tab” would give me the i-adjectives grammar and the kawai explanation and sample sentences. I didn’t think it too much but It doesn’t seem a bad idea to me.

Sorry for the long post, as was just trying to provide feedback, not criticism at all. In fact I love bunpro just as it is on the vainilla version, so thank you for improving an already wonderful learning app. :slight_smile:

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Sorry, I must have missed these questions.

Yes. 100%.

Meh I probably wouldn’t use it but ity might be helpful for others.

I’ve never used bookmarks because it’s pretty easy to search as it is, but any new feature is bound to get used by some people out there.

I’m not sure why you’re doing it in batches anyway. I added all my grammar individually over the years.

Yes please

Yes all that seems very positive.

Sounds good!

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hello, just wanna report a bug for this vocab deck reviews.

for some vocab, after i click “know” button, it reappears within the same session. After i finish the session, it reappears again exactly after in new session.

Also i’ve encountered a strange bug few days ago, after i finished one of my grammar review session, around 4-5 items turn into ghost, whereas i definitely sure got all of them correct before.

Hope this report reach you :slight_smile:

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@Jake I want to confirm the bug that @stillwill and @kush already reported.
Sometimes same vocab items show up multiple times in one review session. The reason is the “review/XXX/edit” endpoint sometimes returns 404 Not Found only for vocab items. So I have to mark the item known multiple times until it eventually returns 200 OK.
image

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Thanks for the feedback and the bug report.

@stillwill @HotAirGun

I was able to patch it. It will be out with the decks update tomorrow. Turns out it is a bug with the combo of ghost reviews/user reviews and vocab.

Sorry for the trouble :bowing_man:

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thanks for the respon.

In addition, it would be good to add option such as “i know this” directly in the vocab deck list or at least in the lesson session. Instead of clicking every word, which will open new tab, then click “add to review”, then click “i know this”.

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I have so many ideas, this is awesome!!

I want to do “related grammar” decks! But like not just related in meaning, also related in text. So like だけ、だけど、だけで、だけれど、etc.

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I like how Bunpro is expanding to include grammar items as well. The one thing I’d like to suggest is the ability to keep grammar and vocab separate so that the reviews don’t mix together. It’d be nice to study/review individual decks by themselves to keep things more focused and not become too overwhelming.

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Just to let you know I’m still having the same problem with items duplicating themselves multiple times.

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Perhaps a toggle setting so users can choose which they prefer? I think it’s more or less proven that true recall of content is better for retention, but some people have strong opinions on this and still prefer the flashcard method for a myriad of reasons, speed surely being one of them.

Love this idea.

Absolutely! Having to search through a whole library of decks to find the ONE I’m currently focusing on would be a huge drag. Maybe an option to bookmark multiple and even order those would be useful. (Sidenote, the ability to do reviews for multiple decks in the same session would be a a feature I’d love to see!)

Also a fine idea. For me personally, the ability to add, for example, 20 N5, 10 N4, and 5 N3 items would be a cool thing to be able to do since each level would obviously come with its own burden of difficulty.

100% yes. This would be a great and easy way for users to add their own notes regarding nuance or use case for various vocabs that they’ve picked up in their own studies.

This sounds like an incredible way to build up the platform and streamline the study process by “scaffolding” lessons to call back on previous content in an intentional manner.

As always, love the updates, great work! Now if I could just carve more time out for reviews :sweat_smile: :rofl:

:exploding_head: :exploding_head: :exploding_head:

Edited to add-
Came back and read through all of the other suggestions, and found one person suggesting the exact thing I was going to request and hadn’t seen:

I think one of Bunpro’s strongest points has always been the context provided right there in the review screen for grammar. If that same context was provided for vocab, maybe even an entire sentence, using Bunpro over other services would be a no-brainer to me. Similar to how grammar points currently have one example sentence per SRS level, I think vocab could have the same.

This would allow people to encounter vocab words not only in a more native environment, but expose them to words often used in conjunction with others, or common contexts for that word. Basically, just have a Japanese sentence with one word in English that you have to write the Japanese for.
eg-「これは[book]です。」⇒ ほん(本)
Obviously, they could increase in difficulty in accordance with the appropriate grammar for whichever N-level or path deck the vocab belongs to.

I also have thoughts on how Bunpro could teach kanji, but that’s neither here nor there… :eyes:

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Really good idea, I definitely think that inputting the Japanese would be more beneficial than inputting the English, as it may force the user to think about which of a potential list of similar words might work the best in the target sentence. However It should be a user choice. Some may prefer to input English, while some may prefer to see the English, and input the Japanese. They both have their merits.

Example, if the user sees (Condition) where the Japanese word should go, they would have to read the rest of the sentence closely to know whether they should input 都合, 状況, 状態, or 具合.

:eyes: Being someone that loves kanji way more than is reasonable, anything that can be done to make the kanji learning journey 100x more enjoyable is the dream. :raised_hands:

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100% agreed! I actually voted for both J>E and E>J input methods in the poll up the thread because I believe they’re both highly valuable for reading/listening comprehension and recall/speaking skills respectively.

I think it would certainly take a lot of thought/work to come up with the best implementation of this without overloading the true beginner learner, but I have faith in y’all as a team entirely :grin:

Right? Even with a lot of the currently available resources, sometimes it just feels like beating your head against a textbook (or computer screen) until it’s absorbed :rofl: I’ve learned so much useful information that I wish I would’ve known about earlier in my studies, especially things like semantic-phonetic components :crazy_face:

But I digress, and I don’t want to derail the update thread :joy:

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@Jake please can we get a section to add your own synonyms,?
Case in point, I just answered カフェ with ‘cafe’ and it was wrong because it didn’t have the accent over the ‘e’. I know you’re busy so I’m happy just pressing backspace and fixing it for now, but it would be helpful at some point in the future.

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Also this one needs fixing. I tried the report button but it wasn’t working.

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Update 1/31

Bookmarked decks

Your bookmarked decks will now show at the top of the decks page for quick access.
You can bookmark any deck via the “Bookmark” button at the top of that deck’s page:


Deck Settings

Using the deck settings button at the top of each deck’s page.

  • You can set your deck to be the “Main Deck”. Doing so will make it so that using “Study” will automatically use this deck for learning new content.
  • You can change the deck batch size for new items.
  • You can set a default SRS level for content from that deck. This is mostly useful for going through lower level content as a refresher.
  • Lastly, you can change the new vocab you learn from a specific deck to be manual input or flashcard style.
  • Should you need it, you can update all the already learned vocab reviews for a specific deck to be a certain review type.

Review from Deck
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It is now possible to limit your reviews to content that comes from a specific deck. You Do Not need to be actively studying that deck to utilize this feature. It can be particularly useful if you want to do just your N5 grammar reviews or want to only do vocab reviews, simply use the relevant deck(s).


Manual Input & Flashcard Display

Deck content now shows its input style. In a future update, we will allow for individual settings on each vocab word to adjust input style


Manual Input Vocab Reviews



Manual input vocab reviews are here :partying_face: The logic behind matching your answer to the possible answers, taking into account typos and other possible answers is still a work in progress. We want to look at the data and get feedback from you guys before we adjust it too much. If you feel it is too lenient or too strict, please let us know. In the next update we will add the ability for you to add your own synonyms and accepted answers to vocab.


Wanikani Sync

This will mark all of the Wanikani vocab you have learned so far as “Known” on Bunpro, preventing a doubling up of reviews.

Due to the large number of vocab, this can take a little while to process so please wait for the page to automatically refresh. :bowing_man:


Bug fixes

  • When you have finished a deck, you should get the proper display message
  • The bug with ghost review vocab has been fixed. You shouldn’t have reviews getting stuck on loop any more.

As always, thank you to everyone who gave feedback after the initial release. We would love to hear your thoughts on this update. Stay tuned for further updates and improvements to decks and vocab reviews. :bowing_man:

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Fixed! It was a bug with data on our end.

I think the next update out later this week should include changes from everyone on this new update, and should also include notes for vocab as well as custom synonyms. For the café instance, we definitely should accept it without the accent.

Ignoring the fact that we should have a non accented café as an answer, in this case, the current threshold is an 80% match between your answer and any of the answers we have as accepted answers. So one letter off quickly puts it below that threshold on shorter words.

We aren’t yet sure if that is too strict for general use cases but more data should help us tune it.

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Yessss this is amazing, especially the manual input and being able to review without actually having to add everything to my reviews first!

どうもありがとう!

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