When should I hit "UNDO"?

Bunpro
#1

While I understand that the UNDO button can be very dangerous, I also understand that it save lots of headaches avoiding accumulating a bunch of trashy ghost reviews.

When should I press it? I was thinking of these reasons:

  • You misspelled one thing that you really shouldn’t have misspelled (typo)

  • The question was actually looking for the polite form and you put the casual, and the question marked it incorrect without warning you. This happens very frequently because the moment you type the first letter into the box, you will no longer be able to see if the question says [casual] or [polite]

  • You put a verb in the past tense, but it’s looking for the present tense and doesn’t warn you. Almost everything in English reads as if it’s in a past tense, so this happens more than I’d like it to.

When is the best time to hit that Undo button?

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#2

I mostly use it for typos because I’m more likely to make typing mistakes on my phone when I’m really sure of my answer and don’t check if I hit the buttons I intended to tap.

I can emphasize with your second point because the instant I start typing, I immediately forget what the grey text says, too. But I must have had better luck with politeness levels, because I don’t remember those to be particularly problematic.

Past/present is something that has to be learned though. English tenses don’t translate 1:1 to Japanese, so figuring out which one would be used in each given scenario is part of what we’re supposed to learn.

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#3

I use undo for things like past and present confusion when it’s not the thing being tested, though I feel a bit bad about it.

Though when I get the important part right and mess up by using 〜ます instead of 〜ました for example, I can’t help but feel that it would be counterproductive not to correct the mistake while the grammar point is supposed to ようにする or something.

This is not to say that the large variety of example sentences are bad, just that the yellow warning text could possibly be expanded upon to take things like this into account too.

5 Likes
#4

I’ve used undo in all three of those situations, but you have to be careful of the politeness case. Make sure you don’t get into the habit of mixing casual and polite speech in unnatural ways.

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#5

It can and will, if you drop a report on sentences that are missing it!

I remember when those yellow warnings were first being added to the site; it was a huge confidence booster because instead of RED RED RED every time I wasn’t absolutely perfect, I started getting messages that were effectively saying, “hey, you’re on the right track here, there’s just one thing you haven’t accounted for yet!!”

It’s much more encouraging/reassuring to know that you’ve at least tried something sensible enough that the system caught it for you. So, I’d highly recommend dropping notes for the devs if you find other places to add them :slight_smile:

10 Likes
#6

Based on what was said already and taking that into account, this is generally what I try to use it for:

  • Obvious typos
  • Cases where it marks casual wrong when it wants polite (and vice versa) and either form could be valid since remembering the grey text is a constant problem (but this is only most times, if the sentence clearly dictates what it should be then it’s my fault for not reading the sentence)
  • When I don’t know what type of word something is (almost exclusively -eru and -iru exceptions or na-adjectives that end in “i”), didn’t learn that word yet and it was the only mistake
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#7

I was going to ask this as a topic but I thought it’d be better to bump this old thread instead. Bunpro has changed tremendously since the last reply so I thought it was a conversation worth reviving.

I try to use an absolute minimum of hints, ideally just the Japanese sentence and whatever verb is in brackets next to it. Personally, I use Undo when I couldn’t have known the answer was incorrect with the information that I had. Sometimes there are sentences where I’m missing context that hints would’ve given. I’m not sure what the best fix is for that.

1 Like
#8

Sounds like you’re using it as best you can. I feel like things are too ambiguous to try to use no hints.

I try to use it at a minimum but I mainly use bunpro to memorize the basics of the grammar point. If I missed a mixed grammar point sentence, but get the target grammar correct, I undo and give it to myself. I also try to understand why I was wrong as best as I can before moving on.

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#9

I’m pretty liberal about using undo.

Personally I’m not really approaching bunpro as a tool to perfect specific elements of grammar. I don’t think I can get to an instinctive understanding of grammar through isolated practice like this. The grammar that I get perfectly in a way that’s useful are things that I’ve obtained through consistent exposure, to the point where I can construct the thing I’m trying to say in my head without thinking about specific elements.

Instead I’m using bunpro as a way to cover many elements of grammar and as a system to consciously review those elements at sensible intervals. That way, when I’m doing other forms of practice I can have a pretty solid understanding to work off of as a foundation.

If I know the general grammar points
and what it’s asking, even if I’m not clear on some important details (e.g. whether you need to nominalize a verb with の before attaching the word) I’m fine using undo until I get it.

3 Likes
#10

When I get (guess) the correct grammar point but I might not conjugate it as the question wants (though nowadays it’s a lot more forgiving), then I’ll undo if I’ve a big stack of ghosts & reviews already.

#11

I don’t have a set rule, it’ll vary depending on my mood even. I tend to be a lot more forgiving of errors at low SRS levels too, since I know that they’ll come back soon enough anyway.

Sometimes I do the opposite: I fail the sentence on purpose the 2nd time because I think it’s an interesting construction and I want to ghost it.

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