Why is the verb conjugation grammar unit so stacked?

Bunpro
#1

Hello, new user here.
For most of the lessons on bunpro, you are being asked to learn one thing. Like how to say something is so in a polite way, and then later you learn it in a casual way.

But for verbs you’re asked to learn all 4 tenses, and both forms of politeness at the same time, so it’s actually 8 lessons in one, and you’ll only get quizzed on one of them in the review(?). Why is it like this? Why isn’t it 4 or 8 separate lessons? I feel like this makes learning verb conjugation with bunpro pretty pointless.

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#2

@Harald1
Hey and welcome on the community forums!
We are aware of the issue, and what is more we are already working on it (that is splitting conjugations to separate grammar points, writing comprehensive explanations and so on).

So the problem should be solved and learners will have better experience learning :slight_smile:

I hope it helps,
Cheers!

24 Likes
#3

@mrnoone ,

I appreciate the team working on this. After growing increasingly frustrated with this I just searched to see if other users are having the same issue and landed here. This is my #1 issue with Bunpro and the thing I think makes it mildly unusable.

For example-- I can learn a grammar point for conjugating u verbs in a certain tense and pass the reviews. Then I end up getting an example that uses a different ending on the u verb and get it wrong a ton. It feels like i’m not getting even coverage across all of the u verb endings when I get a new grammar point and it is incredibly frustrating to the point where I’m not sure bunpro is the right tool for me.

I really hope this is something the team is still working on because I think Bunpro has incredible potential and a really great backbone!

2 Likes
#4

Just to say, I think it would be worthwhile if we could get tested on all of the different possible endings when there are say an i-adjective variant, na-adjective variant, noun variant, verb variant, etc. This happens often and it currently seems pot luck which one of the many you’ll be asked to do in your reviews.
I definitely value BunPro and will be continuing to use it regardless, but I think accounting for each possible grammatical ending and learning/practising/getting tested on each one of those would really increase the value of BunPro as a grammar-learning tool :slight_smile:

5 Likes
#5

I could agree that they could break out conjugation a bit more. If you’re looking for more verb conjugation practice, check out Don’s conjugation drill page! —

https://wkdonc.github.io/conjugation/drill.html

I think this is what you two may be looking for. Hope this helps. :slight_smile:

5 Likes
#6

When I hit the conjugation wall (not just in BunPro, but also partly in BunPro), I used a drill tool like that and it helped for sure.

There was also a big chart in a PDF format, which I seem to have lost track of, which showed all the different conjugation forms, and showed how they connect together. It was so detailed, you sometimes had to zoom in to the chart to get to the nitty gritty notes and details. But it was super useful as it laid things out in a more ‘logical’ way than is possible to learn simply with an SRS system (IMHO).

It was more or less split into columns, such as for basic conjugation (masu stem), Te form, negative form, past, passive, potential, etc. And it was colour coded, too, I think, though might be misremembering that.

If anyone knows which chart I’m talking about, and knows the link, please post it. I’m sure it would be helpful to the folks on this thread.

2 Likes
#7

Thank you so much!! This looks Awesome!

2 Likes
#8

Thanks, yeah if anyone can find the chart you’re referring to i’d love to see it!

I think what’s frustrating me a bit is that since Bunpro is a paid service I shouldn’t need to search for this stuff on my own in order to make progress in the SRS. I can probably find an anki deck that will teach grammar with all the conjugations split out, but I wanted to pay for one for the convenience.

Would love to hear from the bunpro devs on the progress of this!

2 Likes
#9

Is this what you were referring to?

4 Likes
#10

Yep! That’s exactly the one. Nice find!

I remember sometimes just spending a chunk of time studying that thing and finally starting to see how different forms connect together. It didn’t help necessarily with more advanced forms like the conditional えば – that’s where BunPro really helped to introduce things in a more step-by-step way – but at least knowing that they existed and ‘had a place’, so to speak, in the world of Japanese grammar was very helpful for ‘priming’ me to learn them once I got around to them in BunPro.

One of the things I liked the most out of it was how it split the columns up by ending sounds (mostly the vowel sounds, plus the Te form), which allowed me to make up some helpful mnemonics for the different cases/purposes once I started to learn them in BunPro.

For example, I worked out a mnemonic for learning the differences and how to conjugate between Passive, Causative, and Passive-Causative, when it came to that, and now that i have the mnemonic, I can usually figure out the differences pretty consistently.

It’s a long mnemonic (kinda like a story, actually), so I won’t spell it out here; but the main point is that it uses the soundings of the endings to rhyme with some English words/made-up-phrases so I can tell if I need to “pass a rare rumour”, or “cause a saucy rumour”, or “passively cause a saucy rare rumour”. Wrote a post about it somewhere a while back, either here or on the WaniKani forums.

Anyway, I would have had a hard time putting that all together if I hadn’t had that chart with all that info condensed all into one place for me.

#11

Well, I’m not exactly sure which particular grammar point(s) is/are the one(s) you were struggling with, but have you already scoured the Resources tab of each of the grammar points you’re struggling with? There is usually some good links and stuff for the learning/studying part of grammar in the Resources tab. Technically, you can (probably should) think of BunPro more of a tool for helping you remember grammar points you’ve already learned elsewhere (e.g. by reading from the links in the Resources tab), rather than as a ‘textbook’ or ‘course’ or ‘tutor’. SRS is more for memory than for comprehension/understanding, IMHO.

#12

It’s honestly most of the u verb conjugations of all varieties (past, て, etc). I understand the conjugations when I read through the resources 100%, my issue is more that the different u verb ending are all quized as one SRS interval even though they all have slightly different conjugations depending on the ending. with everything else i’m pretty spot on and the SRS is working well, those are just really getting to me though :’(

1 Like
#13

Ah, I see. So, it’s more that all the godan verbs (u verbs, as opposed to ichidan ru verbs)are being handled by a single vocab item then, eh?

Well, I basically agree with you that they should probably be split or something, at least so that there are more sentences (and thus more verbs) to practice on.

However, just as a ‘consolation’, there will be plenty of opportunity to practice conjugating many different godan verbs in many different sentences all throughout the rest of the BunPro grammar points, as it’s something you basically have to do all the time in Japanese, so a lot of example sentences in other grammar points will require you to correctly conjugate different verbs in different cases. To the point that sometimes it’ll get frustrating that you’re not actually focusing on the grammar point itself, but just finding the right way of connecting it in to a proper conjugation.

So, lots of practice coming up.

But I still do agree it would be nice if there were more example sentences (probably by having different grammar points for different godan verb types) focused specifically just on conjugating those verbs in different ways. At least that way it will be more clear to the learner that, “Yes, I have successfully learned how to conjugate bu verbs,”, or “Yes, I have covered the tricky cases for kuru and iku,” etc. Just so we have a more clear sense of what’s been covered, and our progress on those various aspects/cases.