What do you combine with Bunpro?

Bunpro
#1

Hi all,

I’m loving bunpro so far. I started 2 months ago.

What do you combine Bunpro with for learning Japanese? And what do you recommend.

I’m hopefully going to Japan for work in 10 month as a business trip and would like to be at least a little bit conversational. I started studying Japanese 2 years ago, although I only started very dedicated since August 2023. Before that I only learned how to read and write hiragana and katakana, with a little bit of vocab and grammar.

Right now this is my study method:

Live tutoring on italki: 2 hours a week
Grammar: Bunpro
Kanji: WaniKani
Audio immersion: Japanesepod101 (2 year subscription) and learnjapanesepod
Fun: Duolingo plus
Vocab: Anki (ios). I make my own deck with words and phrases of italki classes.
Video immersion: anime, youtube videos
Real life immersion: trying speaking with my Japanese colleagues
Books: Japanese from zero 1

I have one rule and that is that I need to study at least 30 minutes a day, but preferably 1 hour. Most of the times I manage to study 1 hour +.

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#2

in order of frequency:
kindle ebook reader
alot of youtube native content
anime with japanese subtitles

1-2 months before winter jlpt i grind old jlpt tests. (passed n4, n3, n2?)
cannot stress enough how important it is to delve as soon as possible into japanese content that is made from japanese people FOR japanese people.

i miss a reading component in your list and would recommend:

its japanese news made for kids and its difficulty is around n3-n2.

5 Likes
#3

Thank you. Reading is indeed something I don’t do enough yet. I installed Todaii, but did not yet use it. I also bought the first 4 manga of Demon slayer, but it’s maybe still too difficult for me.

News web easy seems interesting!

I use the kindle scribe to make notes and read. So maybe I should buy an easy E-book there as wel.

#4

Anki + jpdb (jpdb I use to study vocab beforehand in anime/vns i wanna play or maybe watch) and my main method is now just reading eroge with a texthooker all day.

2 Likes
#5

Is there a specific Anki deck you like? I tried the 2000 core deck, but I got frustrated, because it was too difficult to remember. This was a like 3 months ago, so maybe now I could manage.

That’s why I now started making my own deck. It’s more time consuming, but I don’t get frustrated, since these words are learned in context because of my teacher (who is amazing!).

#6

I do a lot of Wanikani.
I have a handful of japanese books/manga that I’m slowly trudging through. I really need to get back into Anki.

I’ll second NHK easy news. I try to at least see what new articles they have up on any given day. I just wish they were a little more interesting.

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#7

Ahh that’s great you’re actually making the effort to speak in Japanese with other people. I just get so flustered and embarrassed HNNG I need to push myself >__<

I’ve been using Satori Reader along with Bunpro – it’s been sooo good for vocab and listening, and I read each story out loud to myself multiple times along with the audio. I also use Pimsleur while I’m walking or doing the dishes lol.

For kanji/writing, I “mine” sentences from Satori Reader and anime, and then use the Migaku Kanji God add-on in Anki, which was a game changer for me. Can’t recommend this enough…and can’t believe it’s free! Every day it takes a number of kanji from a deck of your choosing, breaks them down into multiple cards containing primitives, and each card has stroke order. It’s cool to see the kanji I learned, then see them in the vocabulary in the sentences I’m learning. I just learn kanji + vocab better when they’re in a kind of context.

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#8

That are some very useful tips! I’ll look into it.

And about speaking, I try and fail. But at least I try. I’m never shy to speak. But that’s I think because of my job. I’m used to speaking to hundreds of people in different languages all around the world.

What I learned from all my business trips and presentations is that no one cares if you say something which is not completely grammatical correct. They always appreciate the effort, because they know it’s not your mother language. I experience this in both English, French and Japanese.

Another funny thing is when I succeed to say something fluently in Japanese. I asked a Japanese colleague very casually how her weekend was and she started speaking full of excitement and way too fast. The only thing I heard was 天気. And then the awkward silence follows :stuck_out_tongue:

So I responded:

ゆっくりお願いします。

But then I got a call of a customer unfortunately.

6 Likes
#9

lollll that’s such a cute story! :joy:

1 Like
#10

The Japanese reddit recomended these decks
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/911122782 Or https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2141233552

There are alot of tools to make anki cards easier. Like
[#]Subs2srs | Learn Any Language | Fandom
[#]TheMoeWay (learnjapanese.moe)
[#]Yomichan and Mining - Animecards Site

I hope that helps. Looks like plenty of studying to me

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#11

Satori Reader: reading, listening and grammar notes
Kanji Study App: for kanji learning (bought the srs part) and as an offline dictionary
Anki: vocab (using the core 6k deck, all cards suspended and I unsuspend the ones I want to learn)
tadoku.org: many many many short free graded readers, many of them with voice (though the quality varies)
bilingualmanga.org: can read Japanese manga and one-tap see the english version of the page I just read
Todai: easy Japanese news app, includes a lookup function, jlpt mock tests (with listening section) and some videos (mostly music) with jp/en subtitles
Netflix: has quite some Japanese series and movies with jp voice and subtitles

2 Likes
#12

I do core 2k/6k from here DJT Anki guide (neocities.org)

THE WAY TO REMEMBER IT BETTER:
every night before you go to bed do a review in advance and repeat this 2 times or so for the full review if possible

Here’s how to do it:
click the ‘custom study button’ then ‘review ahead’ and put 1 day

THEN on your new ‘custom study session’ click ‘options’ and UNTICK ‘reschedule cards based on my answers on this deck’ so it doesnt ruin tommorows reviews (This is essential so make sure to uncheck that box)

Also, when you do your anki reviews normally dont press the hard button. Only use good and again-if you cant remember it after 5 secs or so then click again. (this is because the hard button messes up reviews and adds too many)
Since you will review ahead anyways, you probably will get 100% retention on your anki for the next day. My retention went from below 80% to 99%/100% since I now review ahead before bedtime 1 or 2 times.

ALSO, from that deck I linked you make sure to search up the meanings of the words you see there on jisho.org as a lot of the meanings on random anki decks are a bit weird so you can quickly manually replace them with the first definition on jisho for that word

2 Likes
#13

I started with theMoeWay N5 now, with 15 new cards a day + the custom made cards from my lessons with a teacher.

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#14

Take a look at this video too

You can also do this with anime and easily just mine vocab you come across adding it to Anki (you can choose not to add sound as it’ll reduce the process by a few seconds too)
After you have a base level of vocab I recommend doing this till fluency
Here’s a guide Visual Novels - Animecards Site
Oh and if you ever need help finding some VN to play If you decide to do this message me and I’ll DM you details

2 Likes
#15

Thanks. I will come back to this ones I have some more vocab.

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#16

If this works for you great. I do sometimes review ahead if I finnished my reviews and want to study more.
This sounds to me like a stratagy to never fail a card. If you do not know a card, it is better to fail it, so anki will schedual more practice.
Here is how failing a card with reschedualing works in anki:
Anki will drop the level and make a ghost. By defult it sends it back to beginer, but you can set it to a percentage of the previouce level (Mine is 新しい復習間隔（前回比） 0.50) 50%
My ghost setting is (再学習ステップ 30m 1d 6d. I have to pass 30 minutes, 1 day and 6 days later to excorsise the ghost.

The your stratagy contains a 10m and 1d ghost and no level penalty. If you change this in the settings, only the cards you get wrong will appear again the next day.

The easy and hard buttons “mess up the SRS” because you remember hard answers much better than you think, leading to ‘too many reviews’.
You can turn off ease by following some tutorial (look up “ease hell”).
then instead of grading hard for “cards that are hard” to “cards that I got wrong, but don’t want a ghost”- what actually happens when you grade a card ‘hard’

Also, ghosts don’t affect the the level penalty.
The goal of SRS is to have 75% to 90% retention. That is the spaced part of spaced repetition.

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#17

I have been studying for a year, but I just joined bunpro.
In my first year, I completed all the Pimsleur Japanese audio levels, which was really useful for speaking, but not as good for listening and almost useless for reading. I learned kana on Duolingo.
I also spent 5 months in Japan and got a lot of practice from that! The Pimsleur courses I did were invaluable for my time there, but if you already know basic/intermediate Japanese, it might be too slow for you.
Now I’m learning kanji through wanikani and also writing them in a notebook.
For listening practice, I listen to the Japanese with Shun podcast.
And for more natural listening practice I watch Terrace House on Netflix which is a reality show where they speak like real life japanese people instead of textbook characters or anime characters.
For reading practice, I like using graded readers, and also children’s books. And for fun I also practice reading with a Japanese version of a Pokemon mystery dungeon game I bought at a thrift store in Japan. The game has no kanji and a lot of vocab you wouldn’t use in real life, but I like the series a lot so it’s motivating.
For grammar, other than bunpro, I like the Learn Japanese with Masa Sensei podcast when I want to learn with an audio format. She goes over grammar points quite quickly so it’s great for review but not as beginner friendly unless you’re a fast learner!

3 Likes
#18

You gave me much more insight in how it works. thanks.

#19

5 months in Japan, amazing :slight_smile: Then you will have learned a lot I’m sure.

I didn’t know Pimsleur yet.

Thanks for the podcast tip. I commute a lot, so podcasts are very useful to me.

#20

Hi Erz, O wpuld love to immerse in youtube mative content with subs, if you have any guidance where I can start, please shoot me with some links. Thank you

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