I’m going through both the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, and also the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar. I manually search for each point as I study them. I’ve been focusing more on the DIJG lately because I am taking the N2 next month and pretty much all of the grammar in DBJG is review. That being said, I still want to finish it, as it offers excellent explanations regarding grammar points and specifically details the differences between similar points that I am already familiar with. There are many many grammar points in these dictionaries that are not on Bunpro. These dictionaries offer the best explanations I’ve ever found and are widely regarded as the best and most complete resource available when learning Japanese grammar. Everyone studying Japanese should have DBJG.
Default path for me.
I started (re)learning Japanese using Genki I and II, then went to AIAIJ. I started using Bunpro when I was doing Genki II, and I started off on the Genki II pathway, then moved to AIAIJ.
But a few weeks ago I switched to the Bunpro pathway. The main reason was that I was stubbornly sticking to Genki and AIAIJ, but I suddenly realized that I really didn’t like them very much. It was tedious to read the dialogue, then read the vocabulary and grammar points, then do the drills.
It was much more enjoyable for me to be introduced to the grammar point on Bunpro, read the explanations/special comments, maybe read an online article (but usually not), and then really look through the example sentences to see how the grammar point is actually used.
It might be just my personality, but the example sentences were what really helped me to understand the grammar point. For certain things (よう、そう、らしい as an example) I needed to use the cram feature or closely study the special comments to understand the nuances of the different uses, but for most grammar, it was the example sentences that nailed it down for me in my head.
So I have ditched my grammar textbooks (and crying considering how much they cost me) and started using Bunpro’s default path instead of the textbook path. Each grammar point builds on the next and I find I enjoy doing my grammar much more when I only need to log in to Bunpro every day to do my SRS and then learn a couple more grammar points. The structure of the textbooks (dialogue, vocabulary, grammar, drills) just wasn’t interesting for me and if I only relied on them, I didn’t progress in my grammar learning.
I am really grateful to Bunpro for their SRS and also their grammar explanations all on one website. Otherwise, I would probably stall on my Japanese learning like I did a few years ago, simply because I don’t enjoy textbook learning. I’m in N4 right now but I hope Bunpro will be able to add grammar explanations for N3 by the time I get there. Until then, I can rely on the Resources section and still look things up in my textbooks or read online articles.
Going to save this post for the next time someone asks which path to use because it sums up every single thought I’ve had since switching to the Bunpro path a year ago! So glad it all worked out for you after switching and become more enjoyable to digest grammar.
I’ve looked at the various paths from time to time and yes the Bunpro path does have more stuff to learn, it just makes for a much more enjoyable experience if you’re utilizing the example sentences like you did.
I was following the Genki path up until a short while ago, but now that I have moved on to Quartet, I’m suddenly pathless. It doesn’t make a huge difference, really, since I used to pick the grammar from the list based on what I learned in Genki, but it was nice to be able to see an overview of what Genki was going to teach me so that I could better decide whether or not I would have to teach myself additional grammar points on my own.
Now that I’m using Quartet, I’m not fully sure what that book is going to teach me and what it’s not. I don’t want to jump ahead of the book and pre-learn something that it’s going to teach me as part of its natural progression, but I don’t want to leave those extra grammar points lying around forever either.
Very similar story to a lot of the previous responses. I started on the Genki I path as I had the textbook. Found that the latest edition didn’t quite align with Bunpro. Stopped all Japanese for a bit.
Came back, decided that I was going to use Tae Kim, so started the first few chapters of that and the associated path. Found my eyelids drooping a lot when reading TK. Stayed on the TK path but just used BP for a while, thought ‘why am I doing that’, switched the path to BP.
Also I thought, BP, these guys are grammar pro’s that are doing it day-in and day-out with the flexibility to tweak and change, introduce new items. I’m going to trust them and follow their lead rather than a textbook that is set in stone for 5+ years at a time.
I don’t use the lessons as my brain can’t handle 2 grammar points at a time, but I follow the lesson order - I saw a comment about cherry-picking easier looking points, made me chuckle, yeah I still do that when I’m getting close to completing a lesson that I feel I’ve been on for ages.
I finished the Genki textbooks before I found Bunpro, so to repeat the learned grammar points, I ran through the Genki I & II path…. before losing all motivation.
A week ago I reset everything and now follow the bunpro lesson order, which I find quite nice to work through so far.