Vocab Sentence Randomization

Bunpro
#1

I’m working through the vocab decks, and I’ve noticed that for the vocab with sentences, I tend to see the same few over and over. I’m starting to perhaps notice the pattern that I see the easier sentences, and never the hard ones. Is there some sort of selection process running behind the scenes? For grammar sentences seem to be used sequentially, to maximize time since last seen and minimize the tendency to just memorize it.

My specific circumstance is that I’m an N2 learner and am ready for the hard stuff. I started Bunpro at that higher level, and so did not go through all the content from N5-N1 in order. Could this be causing the backend to infer that I’m not ready for high level content? Or is there something else going on. I scoured the settings menu to check for any sort of level self-declaration or vocab sentence option and couldn’t find anything. I’ve noticed that I’m starting to memorize sentences, and It’s eating in to the memorization value.

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#2

I’m curious to know the answer to this as well. I always assumed it was because if you get an answer incorrect it sets you back a sentence, but even accounting for that I have some words that are Seasoned or Expert and I’m still getting prompted with lower level sentences.

Glad you brought it up though, because I felt like I was going crazy and just imagining things (which I mean, I might be, but at least there’s two people who are potentially seeing the same behaviour).

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#3

I’m not 100% sure about this – haven’t exactly tested it – but I get the feeling that when you answer a vocab sentence wrong, you’ll get the same sentence back next time, until you finally get it right (the first time in the session, not after getting it right after initially getting it wrong). Thus, you’ll only see new sentences when you answer a sentence correctly the first time. Then you ‘pass’ that sentence, so to speak, and advance to the next one.

Again, not 100% sure, but I do see the same sentences frequently, and mostly on vocabs I’m having difficulty with (get wrong more often than not).

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#4

Hi all!

Good catch! Actually at this present moment, despite that we do have a lot of fantastic -more difficult- example sentences, as vocab is still in beta, only the first 4 easier sentences for the vocab will appear in the reviews at this time.

One of the reasons we did this initially was a time factor, and our assumption that a lot of higher level users like yourselves usually already have vocab sources that they are learning from that they are too deep into to switch over to Bunpro (Anki/Kitsune etc). Because of this, the initial thought was that the lower levels would take priority initially for the users that are just starting to learn vocab with Bunpro, and seeing more difficult sentences may be a little demotivating.

I appreciate this sentiment, and also wholeheartedly agree that there should be a way for higher level users to dive into the decks with review sentences that are actually interesting for them to read. This would create an environment where even N2/N1 and beyond students could go back to the lower level vocab and learn some great little nuggets of context or new nuances on certain words.

Although we don’t have an exact timeframe for enabling all sentences as reviews, I have just added it to the list of things to be done hopefully this year! If I may take the opportunity to ask a follow up question. As a higher level user, would you also like the ability to be able to choose what level sentences you see as a minimum in reviews, or is that something that you’re not too bothered about so long as there is variety?

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#5

Thanks for following up on this Asher! Glad to know we aren’t imagining things.

Overall, I’m of the philosophy of the more content the better and don’t mind being exposed to lower level sentences as a way to help reinforce concepts further. That being said, there may be times where it could be beneficial to have the option to set a minimum level. For example, if specifically studying for N1, I may only want to see more difficult sentences to better optimize my study time.

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#6

Would it be possible to make it a toggle-able option to enable all of the example sentences for use in reviews?
As far as I’m aware, the data tables are already built. I would also really like this feature. For some questions I have memorized the general shape of the question rather than the content.

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#7

I’d also like to see this, if possible.

One potentially significant issue that may need consideration is that, as it stands, the currently reviewable sentences have a fairly significant proportion which have ‘bugs’ in them, particularly with the interaction between the Cloze and the English translation-hints.

I’m seeing (and reporting) several instances of mistaken-highlights/hints, and in some cases the same vocab appearing in the Japanese more than once, but only one instance of it blanked-out. I’d say this occurs at a (very rough guess) of approximately 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 reviews/sentences.

If we open up all the sentences for Beta testing, you’ll start to get even more such bug reports, as those ‘new’ sentences will not have been combed through by users yet.

This could be a ‘good’ thing (if you’re currently making good use of user reports, and mostly relying on them for corrections), or a ‘bad’ thing (if you’re busy working through the sentences systematically behind-the-scenes, and more user bug reports at this time would just be adding noise).

Perhaps, as a kind of compromise, you might consider starting to release some of the ‘new’ sentences in batches. Releasing sentences that have already gone through systematic checking on your end, in order to expose them to beta-testing users on our end, to find anything that’s slipped through the cracks so to speak.

Wise man once say, “Release early. Release often.” :nerd_face:

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#8

I see where you’re coming from. Mine is probably a rarer situation, where I sort of grew in to the upper intermediate band over the course of the last year. After taking the N2 this winter, I realized that vocab was my glaring weakness. Since I was already invested in the Bunpro system, I picked up Bunpro vocab to avoid needing to add a third distinct SRS portal in to my rotation. It’s less flexible than Anki, but the sentences and language shadowing potential make it a winner in my opinion. “If only I could get at those harder sentences!”, I think to myself sometimes. I really like the flywheel of encountering an unknown word in a Bunpro sentence and then adding that word to my study deck, exposing me to yet more words. I realized that I had a lot of vocab “holes”, and have been filtering through the N5-N3 decks and adding everything I don’t recognize, in addition to adding higher level stuff ad-hoc as I encounter it in the wild, so this is why I’m eyeing N2/N1 examples for simpler vocab.

As a higher level user, would you also like the ability to be able to choose what level sentences you see as a minimum in reviews, or is that something that you’re not too bothered about so long as there is variety?

This might be nice to have but probably I value sentence novelty over sentence complexity. I worry that my mind is auto-completing the sentence that I’ve spoken aloud several times, and that I wouldn’t be able to recognize or produce the word in a different context. I’m not a pedagogic person, but I feel like this is a thing? With the 10 sentences per grammar element spread, this has never been a problem for me. Sometimes though with vocab I feel like I’ll see the same sentence twice in a row. And yeah, currently it’s the worst of both for me, because the content is both too repetitive and too basic. If a level floor existed, probably I’d filter out N5 stuff to avoid super introductory things while still maintaining the mass. And besides, simple sentences are found in the wild, too.

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#9

This right here is basically the perfect scenario that we are working towards, and the goal that we had in mind when we created vocab. A system where you can learn words, see sentences, learn new words in those sentences as well all within the ‘context net’ of the original word that you were learning. For example let’s say you learn the word 眼科, you’ll then easily be able to send yourself down the path of learning many other health/hospital/vision related words and strengthen your foundational knowledge naturally.

Once the wrapper tool is finished (our tool that lets you click on any word in any sentence), and we have study access to all 8 examples for all words, then it really will be a pretty much endless loop of learning new words either via the decks, or through going down whichever avenue you choose by only adding new words that interest you in the examples.

We could do this either way. Just let users toggle which level of sentences they see, whether it be all, N5 only, N4 only, N3 only, N2 only, etc. Unfortuantely at this present moment, we need to actually ‘build’ the study sentences, as in they require us going through everything and doing the highlighting, setting up the answers, adding alternative answers, writing the English and Japanese hints, etc. This will be done soon though!

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#10

Thank you for clarifying! That sounds amazing! I can’t wait. Then I shall wait for the update before I continue vocab… I suppose a few months?

I was also wondering why I never hadn’t gotten the difficult sentences in vocab, but I didn’t connect the dots like OP. Thanks, Eroliene!

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