What's the thinking behind BP lesson organziation

Bunpro
#6

You know those little cages they used for bingo games? Where it just randomly spits out one. Pretty sure it was a process pretty simular to that. What other explanation would there be fore teaching ように after ようにする、 ように言う、and ように祈る?

ように (JLPT N4) | Bunpro – Japanese Grammar Explained (N4 - 10)
ようにする (JLPT N4) | Bunpro – Japanese Grammar Explained (N4 - 9)
ようにいう (JLPT N4) | Bunpro – Japanese Grammar Explained (N4 - 9)
ようにいのる (JLPT N4) | Bunpro – Japanese Grammar Explained (N4 - 9)

And if that doesn’t convince you, the glorious bingo machine also decided for vocab that shelf should be taught AFTER bookshelf. So it’s actually a bingo machine, or at least that’s the lie I’m telling everyone from now on.

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#7

Reason - ように（言う）（祈る）（する） each have one meaning, while ように + (phrase) by itself can be used to convey many different things, so is technically more difficult .

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#8

Is there evidence for it being more difficult, e.g., psycholinguistic papers that you referred to when making this decision (and all of the others like it).

I am not sure that placing similar grammar points together is better than spreading them out. I can see an argument for immediate contrast, and I can see an argument for getting confident on one before being exposed to other similar points. Again, I would expect there to be psycholinguistic research on issues like this.

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#9

Counter point. The structure of those points have ように in them. So it is still effectively saying “here is the explanation, we use this point you haven’t seen yet btw”
And if you don’t like those three

Is N4 - 6
You’re telling a person that a copy machine copies paper but refusing to tell them what paper is.

Also

On ^ this point. Red is only one colour and technically more simple then colour as a whole since colour can be a lot of things, but you’d still teach colour as a concept before specializing on a colour.

P.S. I’m watching a video of a possum eating a broccoli right now. Incase someone wanted to know

1 Like
#10

One could argue that the idea of grammar points as a whole is a silly concept, as they’re just glorified vocabulary.
Personally, I am in the boat that it’s better to spread out similar concepts over time to staircase it. If you put them all together it is very easy to get them muddled, which is something I often have issues with. (right now grinding out the “敬語” n4 section and it all blends together so I cannot understand anything) While maybe in a formal setting with an instructor teaching it and simplifying the differences it may be different, online it’s better to get down a base idea before moving into the nuances.
There is research out there on this idea, however every person is different, and it really comes down to you as an individual learner to learn your own style.

I have studied how I learn for a few years myself. I have come to the conclusion for my own knowledge, I learn best in a classroom setting, with learning the broad basics, then rigorous drilling, finally I go into the nuances. Of couse, many other people would say that would be torture.

My advice if you struggle with this, is to sit back and figure out how YOU learn.

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#11

I assume that the overview screen you were looking at is the lesson page. In case you haven’t seen it, there is a community post called Bunpro Grammar Explanations, N3! with more details about the lesson order.

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#12

Just a minor counter-counter point:

When I was in kindergarten, I remember learning the names of some colours I hadn’t learned before (I dunno, like pink or purple or whatever).

The overall ‘lesson’ was learning colour, but in order to learn the general concept of colour it was necessary to have some concrete examples to work with, i.e. several examples of specific colours and their names.

So, learning concrete examples and then learning the general concept can also be a good ordering to learn something.

On the other hand, I think a case can be made either way. And there is the fact that we’re learning this as adults, and so we already know (many/most) general concepts and just need the ‘translation’, whereas specific examples with specific nuances can arguably wait.

Maybe there are cases where the Japanese grammar has genuinely new (or at least novel) general concepts grouped with their concrete examples – maybe something akin to the は/が issue, or actually the concept of grammatical particles vs. specific particles is a good example overall, I’d say – so there may be arguments for both orderings, depending on the different specific grammar ‘themes’.

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#13

Just FYI, due to Bunpro’s flexibility, you can easily work-around any ordering to suit your own preferences. E.g. on any particular item, you could Remove From Reviews, or Mark as Mastered (temporarily, then Reset SRS on the item later when ready to really study it).

Not saying this is an ultimate solution, but at least it’s a workaround that really does work.

1 Like
#14

If you find something relevant to Japanese that falls in the category of what is considered good science (systematic reviews) I would be keen to check it out!

A big problem with actual academic work on language learning is that the vast majority of it falls within the category of case series or case reports, which is the least reliable form of research behind expert opinion. Basically, people that want to know about a specific phenomenon interview people who have been through said thing, and then the researcher extrapolates all the data even though they may have never even learned a second language themselves. Case reports are near the bottom of the barrel because they rely on people telling the truth, and people actually even remembering how they did X at Y time.

The way people learn languages also greatly changes based on what language they started with and what language they are going to. This conflates a lot of smaller problems and creates new problems where they may not even have existed for people going between two similar languages.

You are exactly right. The structure itself is first introduced in ようだ (JLPT N4) | Bunpro – Japanese Grammar Explained. This is before any other mention of よう, and assumes that the student already knows how に works with nouns. In this way, ようだ is the first introduction, while ように～ etc etc keep the training wheels on for awhile before using the structure 100% freely later in N4.

The spreading out is the job of the SRS itself. The reason we introduce some things in clumps is due to them sharing a relationship. A lot of research has been done on the importance of relationship in learning and memory. It’s basically a system of having a piece of information that can be latched onto. One of the most famous memory techniques in the world (the memory palace) tries to exploit this by creating artificial things to ‘latch onto’.

I could talk forever about this topic :sweat_smile:. Basically at the end of the day, your brain is constantly fighting you and actively wants you to forget things that are unimportant. We try to combat this as much as possible by setting up exposures in a way that frontload important information in a way that it can be recognized as important.

P.S - We’re not perfect and our order may not be perfect. But we didn’t just slap it together willy-nilly.

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#15

Please do! :sweat_smile: If someone (such as yourself) were to write up any thoughts/ideas they have on learning Japanese – and for me especially if it has some grounding in some science, though this is not truly necessary – whether it be about learning in general, or Japanese in particular, or even if it’s along the lines of recent findings about how the brain works, for example, then I think that would be a really cool kind of thing to post about here. Perhaps in the Bunfire forum, or if there’s a more appropriate forum. Something like a blog post, or just a news snippet, or maybe like a short essay or something (for those who are interested enough to write up such a thing!), I would be very interested to read about it.

For that matter, does Bunpro have anything like a blog or newsletter, or maybe a YouTube channel or podcast? Kinda like how WaniKani/Tofugu has/had?

If not, has anyone on the BP team considered something like that? It could serve as a creative outlet for authors; educational resource for readers; community building if commenting is allowed; and potentially a marketing tool (I would suggest thinking of this angle as secondary, and not primary; nobody really wants to read ‘forced’ (as opposed to genuinely expressive) marketing blurbs – at least not me)).

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#16

Nope it’s a bingo machine, and we cannot truly question it’s wisdom. The true hero of bunpro that we all needed.

Edit:
the bingo machine is also how the reviews you are going to get are decided. DO NOT LISTEN to their lies! I am only trying to tell you the truth do not be blinded with false hoods such as SRS. The bingo machine does it all!

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#17

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#18

Did Chat-GPT really write this? The idiom use is true blue.

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#19

apparently “cheerful Australian” === “Steve Irwin”

fair dinkum

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#20

Finally, a grammar point that makes sense

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#21

There’s actually a mistake in there, extending an invite via 食べましょう is not using the て-form now is it…

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#22

I didn’t think it was but I wasn’t sure so I was just going to blindly agree. Which is also what I do with the real points so you possums gotta make sure their accurate for me!

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#23

While a bingo machine was in our top 5 options, we took a more authentic Japanese approach.

We gave every member of the team a fax machine and a stack of random grammar points, one per page, then at exactly 12:01am on 天皇誕生日 everyone faxed them as fast as they could to the main BP headquarter fax machine and the order they arrived in is what we went with…

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#24

I was imagining him speaking as I was reading it!

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#25

FYI, chatGpt decided to stick with the Australian accent for the rest of that conversation regardless of topic

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Strewth!

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