Wrapping my head around the site behaviour

Bunpro
#1

First of all, apologies in advance if this is covered elsewhere. I am used to using wanikani to study kanji. I realize these are two different platforms and would like to know a couple of things:

  1. Am I to be manually advancing my progress?
    My thoughts: In wanikani, the lessons and reviews come to me. The more I complete, and the faster I complete them, the sooner I progress in level. I believe this is not the case with bunpro? It seems that as long as I am not doing ‘Study’, then I am only getting the reviews that are new or not yet completed successfully a number of times. Is this true?

  2. If #1 in my assumption is correct, how can I stop myself from going too far too fast? I suspect what could happen is that I complete all of N5 study material, and then for weeks on end I am inundated with reviews that I either get wrong or have trouble completing simply because the review workload is too much, leaving no mental room to progress to N4. Is this a fair assessment?

If someone could explain or point to an FAQ which explains my questions I would be most appreciative.

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#2

I personally never use “study” button. And by never I mean never :slight_smile:

I manually pick which grammar points I want to learn, primarily picking those that I’m at least a little bit familiar with first.

This way it’s easier to progress and drill more sentence patterns into my head. And by the time I reach a point that I need to add grammar points I am not familiar with at all I would have heard them a few times in other sentences making it a little easier to understand them.

Obviously different people have different preferences, but I found this approach to be the most effective for me.

As for going too fast - I never add new grammar points if my daily number of reviews exceeds 50. So, if it drops below 50 consistently for a couple of days then I would add 3-5 new grammar points depending on their complexity.

You can obviously choose any number of reviews you are comfortable with, but for me - 50 is a good number where I don’t feel overwhelmed, but still progress at a steady pace.

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#3

I usually do half or a whole lesson, and then wait a few days for the reviews to die down. When there are less than 5-10 reviews a day, I start a new half or whole lesson. Those lessons are usually 8-10 grammar points per half lesson for me. It mostly depends on the time I have in the future.

I’m also going through it from the start of N5 to the end of N1

Also the FAQ is here

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#5

@Kuromaku Thanks for this. As mentioned in another reply there is so much going on in terms of me wanting to study stuff that I would prefer everything is fed to me in a systematic approach. It unfortunately does not seem to be this way on this site. Perhaps a feature request is in order…At any rate, it does help confirm my thoughts and I appreciate the example of how you go about studying here.

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#6

@Pep95

Thanks for your reply. I am aware of where the FAQ’s are located, I just didnt see anything specific to my questions, at least nothing obvious. I appreciate your explanation for how you approach things. Honestly, as a feature request it would be more helpful to me if bunpro could implement a similar learning system to wanikani in that they lay everything out for you from start the finish, should you wish to approach learning in this manner.

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#7

I mean they kind of do. They have all the grammar points accessible in Bunpro’s own original order. When you hit Study it goes through them in that order. The sentences are even designed to be done in that order.

If you want some type of structure, then adjust how many lessons you want to do when you hit Study in your settings, and then just do them once a day.

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#8

Just bear in mind that whenever you do a lot of lessons (or reviews) all at once, a lot of them will come back all at once.

So, to avoid this (potentially demotivating) problem, my solution was to limit myself to a maximum of 3 new lessons per day, unless it was grammar I’d learned elsewhere and was already comfortable with, in which case I’d allow ~10 per day.
I’d also make a point of visiting 2-3 times per day to do smaller review sessions, rather than 1 single “big” review session each day (which might easily overwhelm you if you miss a couple of sessions).

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#9

You can take the book paths like Genki, Tobira, Minna… if preferred for a study path and depth in explanations. An issue with a WK-approach is you have start from their beginning of choice rather than jump in as an experienced user and start studying the most needed grammar points. So I think in the effort of user-flexibility, they chose this route. Otherwise, an N2 learner for example, could take months before reaching any material then would need in the immediate future.

That said, I liked going in grammar order as presented as they were clever to add previous grammar points into later grammar points for re-enforced learning (or least relatively close). Jumping around works for others too if you have good basis already…depends what you want or need.

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#10

great suggestion, I will give it a try. thanks.

#11

another great suggestion. I will do this. thank you.

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#12

i can see your point for sure about wanting to hit the ground running. I myself chose just to start at the beginning to reinforce my already learned grammar. I will however be using the other suggestions I received as well as just resetting my own expectations with regards to my approach in learning on this site. thanks for the insight.

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