When to start learning vocab decks?

Bunpro
#5

Hey Christian and welcome to Bunpro.

I have been in a similar situation. Been studying on-and-off for around 10 years. However I never made it past N5 level.
So I signed up for a 3 month language course in Japan and dropped my old learning stack… which was just Duolingo and the things I remember from the first Marugoto book.

During those 3 months I found a lot of useful tools and settled on: Anki, Bunpro and WaniKani. (ordered by priority) :wink:

I get away with:

  • 30-40 mins of Anki (10 new cards. ~120 reviews)
  • 20 mins of Bunpro (0-5 new cards. ~10-30 reviews)
  • 20 mins of WaniKani (<100 apprentice. ~30-120 reviews)
    a day.

Though I honestly wish, that I could mark vocab in wanikani as known. Since I use Anki as my main source of vocab learning. If I hadn’t setup Anki and more than 3000 cards (a great deal self-made), then I’d probably focus on Bunpro vocab over wanikani. Since they have pitch accent and show the words in context.

3 Likes
#6

How do you find studying vocabulary/kanji without WaniKani’s mnemonics? I’m currently on level 8 of WaniKani and I presume that if I’ll add N5 vocab to my BunPro queue - I’ll start seeing a lot of kanji that I didn’t encounter yet.

#7

I don’t personally use bunpro’s vocab feature since I started with Anki and used the tango n5 deck. I believe I started right away after I learnt the kana, its best to do grammar and vocab together!

1 Like
#8

image
image1125×1465 213 KB

Logged April Japanese study times. WK level 20; level up every 9-10 days. 2 Bunpro lessons/day, currently working through N4. Do not recommend this much effort.

2 Likes
#9

It would definitely be good to start it as soon as possible I think. The way the vocab is organized is that the first 2 to 4 sentences are around the same level (grammar wise) of the vocab decks that they appear in. Meaning that you should already be able to read a few of the example sentences for the vocab as you are learning the grammar.

One of our goals with vocab is that as you improve, so does the amount of sentences you can read. Because of this, whenever you learn new words at N5, aim to read at least 2 example sentences, at N4 aim for 4, at N3 aim for 5 to 6, etc etc. They are all written as a yardstick to help you monitor your progress along the way. Of course there will sometimes be other words in the sentences that you haven’t learnt yet, but the grammar itself should reflect your level.

I have personally studied every deck, and although there are some admittedly boring bits, we are doing the best we can to figure out a way to rearrange the learning order in a way that keeps it as interesting as possible. As you go through the deck, feel free to message me whenever with stuff that bothers you. The more feedback we get, the better we can make it for everybody :blush:.

7 Likes
#10

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question. I appreciate it all.

What ended up working for me is to show only Japanese hints when reviewing vocab and go by context of that when answering. I think it helps with thinking about the word/sentence in Japanese instead of reading it in English and then translate to Japanese, if that makes sense.

I was going to do the cramming route but I also don’t want to burn myself out hahahah.

As far as grammar, since most of N5 is a refresher, I’m able to ‘take it in’ and also see why grammar looks the way it is instead of just learning it blindly.

I also decided not to reset my WK progress at all as I realized I still remember an awful lot of kanji/vocab even though I haven’t touched WK in 3+ years. Having 750+ items to review is gonna be a huge challenge but I think I can take care of that.

I think right now I’ll do:

  • 5 new grammar points each day
  • 10 new vocab in Bunpro
  • Review until 0 since I don’t have much in the beginning
  • Allot remaining time in WK
4 Likes
#11

From day 1.

Vocab is all encompassing, truly enriching and seemingly never ending. It’s the one thing most people will probably be studying way past grammar, reading, and Kanji.

1 Like
#12

Well if you’re already level 30 on WaniKani I’d say you’re pretty safe to just add vocab as soon as you want.
But for anyone else I’d say maybe after they’ve spent a couple of weeks adding grammar into bunpro. Especially if someone was really green, that way they can get used to using bunpro to learn grammar.

Also for me I’m normally more comfortable adding larger groups of vocab at a time then I would be grammar. Grammar is just faster to study for me. If I know the word, write it, if I don’t then push a and enter.

For the last question, I only spend about 1 hour a day. But I try and break that up into around two sessions when I can. I normally attempt to empty the queue for reviews but if it was a busy day I don’t get that worried and just do a chunk. I don’t use WaniKani because I don’t uhh…like WaniKani, but I do read some low level mangas and I try to do about a chapter a day…but it’s more like I get 2 chapters done a week.

1 Like
#13

Right away! WaniKani + Bunpro is a great combo. They sync, and Bunpro will hide the furigana for WaniKani vocab you’ve learned. The example sentences for Bunpro grammar SRS thus helps reinforce the vocab you’re learning. It’s been fantastic for me as a beginner.

As for time spent, I don’t have a fixed goal. I have a desk job so pop into WK/BP throughout the day rather than all at once. I’ve been keeping my Apprentice level items on WK between 70-100 and that seems to keep me at a reasonable pace. For BP I’m even slower, maybe a new grammar item or two a week on average.

2 Likes
#14

I am also doing wanikani and bunpro, for bunpro I am doing 4 new words per day, and has been manageable so far

#15

I began to study N5 vocab after I finished N5 grammar. I do both WaniKani (Level 14) and Bunpro, and I feel like WK cannot catch up with Bunpro, so I am studying the vocab in hope that one day I’ll learn all required kanji. At least I’ll have memorized the readings and vague silhouettes of the words by then

#16

750 reviews might be a lot, but it’s probably much faster to gradually chip at those, than to start from level 1 again and wait for level ups.

I was in a similar situation recently, with kanji studies (in Anki) covered by a massive layer of rust. Instead of re-learning them in whichever order they’d come up in reviews, I decided to start reading a LN and go through the kanji and vocab in the order they show up there, with JPDB help. The idea being that linking a story to full sentences to words to kanji would likely be more memorable. Not sure how to translate that to WK approach though, but my 2 cents anyway.

#17

I also studied Japanese off and on from for 10 years and never did anything besides my beginner textbook too.
In 2020 I found Tofugu’s blog and started using more effective resources
In 1 year
I could read signs in Chinatown because of studying Kanji after 100 hours in KanjiDamage [waniKani works too!].
And I did all the beginner textbook I’d been studying the past 10 years in an SRS [I used Jalup, but Tango N5 or Bunpro’s Marugoto deck are also good]
You can do it!

#18

My experience taught me that vocabulary is learned way more efficiently and easily from context (immersion material or conversation) than from decks or whatever pre-established list.
So I personaly don’t study decks per se but use them by finding in the decks any interesting vocab I learn elsewhere in my native material immersion, and adding them to reviews.

If that is a way you intend to use your decks you should do it immediately, the sooner the better.

#19

Learning vocab on bunpro doesn’t require kanji. For example

image
image1281×141 12.4 KB

I don’t know the furigana of the word between よりand が . I can check by hovering over it, it’s きんにき
Don’t need to know any kanji to answer the question, because you answer in hiragana!
image
image1258×142 14.8 KB

#20

I was googling “bunpro how many vocab per day” and did not even realize I came across my own thread until 30 minutes later. :rofl::rofl::rofl:

I know the last comment was 6 months ago & I’m gonna necro an old thread. But I just returned from another long hiatus and I’ve been steady consistent for the past 6 months. So far this run has been my most consistent run yet.

Back to topic, I ended up resetting my Bunpro progress back to level 1 and just marked grammar points I know/use by heart as Mastered. I also reset my WK progress back to Level 10 to cut down the backlog as the hiatus was too long.

But it’s a bit more manageable this time around as I regularly chat with friends in Japanese/English/Japanglish and the constant exposure has been very beneficial. I’m at a point where I am able to write simple phrases again but my vocab is holding me back.

Over a year later I’m still indecisive whether to start a vocab deck or not (lmaoooooooo). Kind of tempted to just do it though because of WK sync & I can always just mark vocab terms as Mastered if anything else.

2 Likes
#21

One thing that’s also different this time around that’s helped with retention & motivation is using the Bunpro iOS app (and in extension a 3rd party WK app) for reviews so I could also practice flick input. Hitting two birds in one stone feels good as I am able to to learn kanji/vocab/grammar and get more proficient with flick texting.

I’ve also noticed fewer errors/typos since compared to typing in a romaji keyboard.

#22

I hit WK level 18 before starting Bunpro from scratch. I think doing vocab in Bunpro is helpful because you see/use it in context and you are exposed to many different ways you can use the vocab. On WK I tended to just remember a couple of meanings and sometimes not realize how versatile a vocab can be.

But I do think that doing vocab adds a LOT of weight to your reviews. It takes way longer to go through thousands of items in the vocab deck than a hundred grammar points.

1 Like
#23

Are you still using WK in conjunction to Bunpro vocab? I think I’ve gotten kind of tired of waiting for reviews on WK so just last night I started firing up some vocab from Bunpro in the mix.

Also, Translate vs Fill-in vs Reading for Vocab reviews?

1 Like
#24

I’m doing fill in because I wanted to practice in a different way from WK. I had noticed that with just WK a lot of the times I would immediately recall a vocab after seeing the kanji, but I was really bad at saying the word without visual input.

To practice that, I also decided to not sync WK vocab and start from scratch. It’s been pretty good! And I’m taking a pretty lenient approach. If I get the word wrong because I used a synonym, but I feel like I do know the correct vocab, I just correct it and move on to keep the SRS on track. You might have heard a lot of people complain about synonyms in Bunpro.

As for continuing WK, I got a bit tired of it. I’ve kept up with my reviews, but I slowed down a lot on learning news kanji and vocab there. I think once I catch up with my grammar level on Bunpro, I will go back to learning new kanji. The good thing is that the phrases in Bunpro have helped me practice a lot of the things I learned on WK and it has proven to me how effective WK is at what it does.

1 Like