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japanese-cryptic-beauty · 4 months

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In the Land of Electric Learning Aids Part 3: Bunpro

In the last installment I discussed the well-known kanji study website Wanikani. Have you followed that link? It's funny. It's the About Us page describing what Wanikani is. Guess what? It's out of date.

One would think a website would keep the page where it talks about itself and what it is about up to date...

Anyway, as I mentioned in that article, Wanikani does a good job of teaching you kanji and vocab, but it doesn't teach you grammar. (And it does a comparatively weak job when teaching you words that have a bit of grammar tied to them.)

This is where Bunpro comes in.

Ooh, ahhh, what is it good for?

The main focus of Bunpro is to teach you grammar, but it also teaches vocab, and, to a degree, reading comprehension.

I only found Bunpro because someone on the Wanikani forums slighted it by saying that they think SRS is unneeded for learning grammar. Yes, Bunpro teaches Japanese grammar using the Spaced Repetition method I've talked about before in the previous articles.

The default way is very similar Wanikani - you get a set of grammar items to study, and after you've moved through the set, you are quizzed on them and have to enter an answer.

The beauty of Bunpro is its default way to quiz you, though. It presents you with "mad libs."

Or in other words, a "phrasal template." You merely fill in the missing item(s). Bunpro will also provide you with clues and hints if there are any ambiguities.

Take for example the ko-so-a-do words sore, kore, are, and dore. You will be quizzed with various sentences where you have to fill in your here, there, over there, and where. Hints will tell you how close the respective thing is to the speaker - because kore is close to the speaker, sore is close to the listener, are is apart from either, and dore is to find out where something is.

Part of what's great about this approach - except for some initial frustration - is that it also incorporates more unusual examples and usages - like dore can stand for "let's see" as well.

Ordered but not rigid - Paths and Decks

Where Bunpro definitely is different from Wanikani is its high degree of possible customization. Do you prefer to use the mad libs or would you rather see answers and read them in reviews? Do you want to be quizzed (required to enter text) or do you want to self-evaluate like in Anki? Bunpro lets you choose.

But beyond that, Wanikani presents its content as an ordered dependency tree.

The items you initially unlock in WK will in turn unlock further items. New batches of items are further unlocked only if levels are passed (when you pass your initial reviews on almost all kanji of that level). There's some flexibility there, though. Let's say you don't get a particular kanji to Guru level. Then its vocab words won't unlock, but in general this does not affect the overall progression much - unless you're really stuck in a level with too many missed kanji.

Something like that is called a Path in Bunpro, and Bunpro's default way of teaching grammar is called Lessons. If you follow Bunpro's Lessons you will be taught the grammar lessons in the default order that the site staff thinks is best. But you're also free to use the order of popular textbooks like "Genki". In other words, you can use Bunpro as a supplemental tool for following that course as well.

Please also note that even paths are suggestions only. You can go in any order, nothing is locked from you. So Bunpro allows you to grammar for the final N1 test right from the beginning. Going in default order merely safeguards you from seeing stuff too early that you might not have learned yet. Furthermore you can mark things as mastered that you already learned elsewhere.

Bunpro also teaches vocab through a feature called Decks. This is a beta feature that's also available for grammar. Basically, by default a deck is an unordered bag of items you can draw stuff from to learn, or have a fixed amount drawn for you as your next review batch. What makes this super-cool is that you can order vocab according to how much it is used - in anime, or in general, or on Netflix, etc. So you learn the most useful stuff first - for your own preferred use.

Cram, cram, cram!

One of the most useful features on Bunpro I came across recently is the "Cram" function.

When you learn a new item, you are quizzed on it once, then it goes into your SRS review queue. For some items this is fine, but there are more complex grammar points that warrant more initial practice, like let's say the conjugation of u-verbs, and for that you can create a Cram session.

To do so, you select simply which items you want to practice and how many quiz questions you want on each (or all available!) and then start. So if this was the negation of u-verbs, you would now be asked to put various u-verbs into their casual-negative form or their polite-negative form, with a great variety of verbs to stimulate your brain cells.

I did that specifically for the u-verbs because they contain a little property that requires some practice - they shift sounds from one syllable to another: -mu becomes -manai and -mimasen, -tsu becomes -tanai and -chimasen. Add to this that you have to master this in hiragana, where each means a shift of syllable and an exception for verbs ending in plain -u, and you have something that (IMO) definitely warrants some cramming to drive home.

Furigana and Wanikani

In the article on Wanikani I promised that I'd demonstrate how it is a cool feature that WK exports its information as web service.

Furigana are annotations that show you how to pronounce a given (set of) kanji.

By default, Bunpro shows furigana to help you read. But you can switch them off... or go Wanikani. By registering a Wanikani API key Bunpro can safely access your WK progress and hide furigana for all the words and kanji that you already know. (You can also optionally allow them to be displayed when hovering over.)

This makes a lot of sense when combined with the way Bunpro quizzes grammar. When a kanji word is required, you enter it in hiragana (how it is sounded out) and Bunpro will insert the kanji for you when displaying the answer. (This is close to how kanji typing on a phone works.)

To make this even more cool, you can also import the WK vocab you have learned but not mastered yet into Bunpro for extra practice.

The Pros

Bunpro uses SRS for helping you retain important grammar points.

Mads libs / phrase templates allow you to study grammar in the context of actual sentences.

Example sentences are read by a real Japanese speaker, allowing for immersion and being exposed to actual pitch accent.

Lots of examples, included in the quizzes, making for a great variety of questions.

Furigana help you read kanji, but what you see can be synchronized with your Wanikani learning.

Grammar can be learned in various orders, including that of popular textbooks.

Vocab can be studied in various orders, based on how common it is in various media.

Vocab progress can also be imported from Wanikani.

Cram function allows for additional practice outside the regular SRS cycles.

Highly customizable, including how you review your material.

Unlike Wanikani, Bunpro is organized in a way that helps you study for the JLPT Japanese Language Proficiency Test by level both for grammar and vocab.

There's a section for reading which gives you example text to read for each set of grammar passed. (You can even change the reading direction.)

Like Wanikani, Bunpro uses gamification to help motivate you. As you progress, you earn XP towards gaining levels and various badges.

Each grammar item also contains a section with resources for further reading on the topic, both online as links and offline as references to pages in various books. You can mark those you did peruse as "read."

Bunpro has an undo function for situations where you think you simply made a typo. (If you end abusing it, you're only cheating yourself, though...)

Dictionary definitions and references to grammar and vocab are available as context help when you click on example sentences.

There are forums available to interact with other users.

Bunpro's dashboard is actually quite good and updates itself without reloading the page.

The Cons

Bunpro is clearly a site in active development. While I personally didn't encounter outright bugs, I did find various omissions and other issues - like missing audio and broken links.

This is also true for the Wanikani integration on vocab progress. It marked some words I didn't know as done and a few words I do know were omitted. (On average, it works really well, though. And vocab is still beta.)

There are also content issues with the vocab cards, as they may quiz you on meanings you haven't learned with the card itself - by which I mean, meanings that are not listed at the top of the card. They are in the examples, though. In order to see what I mean, please compare the vocab meanings of "suru" with its example here.

When it comes to the reading section, the amount of material per 15 grammar items wouldn't even fill a page taken together.

Bunpro is a service you pay for. It costs about half as much as Wanikani. And yes, it also offers a lifetime option to pay only once, which also goes on sale around New Year's.

As far as I see, Wanikani progress is not tracked permanently, but you have to sync it manually by pushing a button every once in a while even after registering the API key.

Clicking on words has different results in different places. Clicking on example sentences brings often context help. In Reading sections you get grammar help. In other places it only makes the furigana visible. It's hard to know what to expect when clicking a thing.

Caveats

Well, as you can see with the Cons section, Bunpro is... evolving. This is both good and bad. You can expect more out of Bunpro in the future, and I expect that stuff to be well thought out. But you will also see all these small mistakes that come with that. I personally thought the situation was acceptable, but your mileage may vary.

Conclusion

Instead of a summary, let me share an anecdote of my own experience with Bunpro so far.

So, I was looking at the N5 vocab deck and wondered where to start. I didn't really want to learn more kanji-oriented words... because if I had capacity to spare on that, I would do that to further my current Wanikani progress! So I picked the katakana foreign loan words.

Ignorance is bliss (they say), and so I found myself marking word after word thinking "This isn't so hard!" until I "suddenly" had 100 words in my vocab review queue. Add hubris to ignorance. Yes, katakana words are basically badly pronounced / spelled English words for the most part, but that means you still have to memorize how to spell each of them. (Somehow in my brain I thought this would come naturally, as it all seemed "obvious" at first glance.)

Now I had a review queue with a hundred items and when quizzed on them, I failed most of them. (I personally "blame" part of it on the difference between tsu, zu, su, and their ilk for a lot of them, because which of them is used to emulate an English sound is kind of arbitrary.) And fail I did. How to remedy this?

I wondered if I should kick most of them back out of review, but that seemed, like, well, work.

So I made it into an experiment. Would simply encountering the words over and over in SRS reviews improve the situation by itself even if the amount was huge? (After all, they are kinda familiar.)

How Bunpro quizzes you is that it does a first pass over all items in queue, and then it asks you again for the ones you failed before. Successful items will advance in their SRS level, other items won't. So the items I had the most trouble with came back almost immediately in Reviews, while items with greater rate of success would not, quickly separating the tricky ones from the rest.

Within a few review cycles I had the material internalized. And my vocab study advanced by a hundred words! Ah, the artificial joys of progress bars and percentages! My reward center doesn't care, I still was happy.

Finally, I wrote a lot of positive stuff about Bunpro, and the website does not endorse me in any way. In fact, I pay them. Well, I paid them once. Because, again, I became a big fan in a short time and I do recommend Bunpro wholeheartedly. I'm looking forward to what else the site will provide in the future.

Further installments in this series:

Remembering the Kanji / Anki

Wanikani

#learning japanese #bunpro #wanikani #grammar #japanese grammar

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citrijp · 22 days

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yeah (the answer is 大丈夫 by the way)

[IDs in alt]

#; citrijp #; shenanigans #japanese langblr #langblr #langblog #language learning #learning japanese #yes im using bunpro at the moment im just too tired to do anything but this #it's acting as a supplement but it's quite good.

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doedipus · 1 year

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amusing myself while working through vocab/grammar reviews by trying to think of ways to call characters I like effeminate

#I was rummaging around on the bunpro forum and someone linked a site that is supposedly pretty good at proofreading #so I've been running between that and deepL trying to see if I'm calling my blorbo a fag in a comprehensible way

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enbyboiwonder · 2 years

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What the hell is this? Usually you can see the top quarter at least of the characters so you can still figure it out given the choices, but this time you can’t see them at all! And it doesn’t count as an audio exercise since you can still see the word (or, well, you’re supposed to be able to), so even if you have them turned off, you still get them. If this is a new feature, they need to fucking get rid of it, and if it’s a bug, they need to fucking fix it. This has been going on for months now.

#i'm really not sure i'll be continuing with duo past when my subscription ends in october #actually i think they give you a free month and it's november...#they keep moving things around and changing them and adding things and taking them back away again for zero reason #like. why can we not see how much exp we earn in a day anymore?#and they've done nothing to fix the improper readings that all the new voices have had since they introduced them #i'm so fucking tired of hearing 来 pronounced as らい when it should be き #or 着 as ちゃく when it should be き #etc. etc. etc.#and i'll probably be dropping drops too once my subscription runs out #unless they do anything about their new habit of adding new topics with zero pictures #at least i still have wk for now. and bunpro which i suppose i'll have to start properly using again #like i know that duo's really not the best when it comes to japanese but it had still been doing me some good #now it's just frustration after frustration it feels #ebw.op

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corgitation · 5 months

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resources I'm using for studying japanese

vocab/kanji:

wanikani: I use daily reviews to learn kanji and vocabulary using the kanji. This resource isn't free, but this has really helped me stay consistent. I like the UI and find the content helpful

renshuu: this is my favorite mobile app, I use this to learn JLPT-specific vocab and kanji. I use the free version

mochi srs: the best flashcard app! The UI is super easy to use and has lots of shortcuts for making and reviewing cards fast. You can easily create and edit templates for cards, and have cards reference other cards. I have a deck for kanji and one for vocab, and my vocab template references any kanji that are used in the vocab tab. There's also super easy furigana, lots of features for japanese.

grammar:

bunpro: really good for grammar, this has lessons for each grammar rule and divides them into groups through popular textbooks and their own groupings for jlpt grammar

genki textbooks: pretty standard textbook for learning vocab, grammar, and kanji

genki study resources: great site with activities for all the genki lessons

tokini andy genki reviews: extra practice for genki lessons, explains some grammar more clearly, introduces new dialogue.

reading:

japanese folktales for language learners and japanese stories for language learners: folktales are a really great way to learn, because these references come up a lot. I've seen references to urashimo taro in evangelion, and the new pokemon dlc is a reference to momotaro. This book has the japanese on one page and english on the other, with vocabulary after the chapter. (here and here on natively)

animal crossing new leaf tobimori: I've recently started playing this and it's so much fun. I'm already really familiar with the game so I don't depend on any of the text for playing, and it's good for more common expressions, differences in speech between polite/casual/male/female etc. I have a post describing how I'm able to play this here. (here on lingotrack)

listening:

japanese with shun: big fan of this podcast, it's free on spotify and youtube, which scripts on patreon. Each podcast is about a short subject, and they're all in japanese. (here on lingotrack)

learn japanese pod: some free podcasts on spotify with more paid content, this one is both about japanese and in japanese. It will teach phrases for specific scenarios, like ordering sushi or refusing situations.

tracking:

lingotrack: I started time tracking a couple of months ago and it's been so helpful! This site is great for quickly logging study activities and seeing how the time stacks up. It helps me identify which areas I'm spending enough time in and which ones are lacking. I also use the library section for keeping track of my japanese native content

toggl: I use this online stopwatch for tracking the time for different study activities so I can log them in lingotrack. It also has a browser extension which I usually use

finding native content:

natively: excellent site for finding comprehensible input content and tracking days read. This site has a lot of reviews for books so it makes it easy to find books that are on level. You can follow me here

lingotrack: collections in lingotrack provides user generated groups of content so that you can create an see groupings of native material content. There aren't as many reviews for material here as there are for natively though, so I find material there and then add them here. You can follow me here

other:

tofugu: this blog has everything. Use it for finding reviews on japanese language resources, learning grammar rules, etc.

jisho: dictionary app, I use it as my source of truth for vocab and kanji meanings

heisig's remembering the kanji: a different approach to learning kanji, this focuses on first teaching the simplest kanji and building from ones you already know. This is different from wanikani, which will make sure you know (its own) particles before introducing the kanji that uses them, but focuses on learning kanji and vocab in priority order. I'm listing it here because I don't use it much anymore

deepl: ai translator, works much better than google translate. You can also put sentences in chatgpt and ask it for broken down explanations. Take any translations from ai with a grain of salt - they are great tools but do not ensure accuracy

edit 3/10/2024: added tracking and native content sections, added links to lingotrack and natively for media

#japanese studyblr #studyblr #langblr #language #japanese

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stupid-sloot-headcanons · 3 months

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as a former gifted kid who just realised that they're not as "gifted" as they were told they were, who had to rely on their "natural" ability to understanding lessons, which in turn led to them never forming actual study habits, who is barely hanging by a thread with their academics and is honestly just completely lost and don't know what the hell they're doing most of the time..... please spare us some advice sloot on how you were able to learn how to properly study and recover from the burnout 😭 (if that' okay with you. Hope you enjoyed ur day today and tomorrow!!)

Well I think it depends on what you're studying and struggling with, but I'll give you the advice that helped me

Apps/programs like Anki help you remember and incorporate frequency training, so you don't learn everything at once and overwhelm yourself. I use flashcards for the bulk of my language studies.

For Japanese, I use Bunpro because I love its grammar lesson setup and again, it incorporates frequency training. I use Anki for Kanji and sentences in Russian and Japanese and I'm doing a little Italian for funsies.

For languages in particular, immerse yourself as much as possible in the language. Films, podcasts, YouTubers, tv shows, music, as long as it's in the language and ideally without subtitles if you want to be based and challenge yourself. Babies and kids learn fast because their brains are still forming connections, but ALSO because they hear the language constantly. Also, THINK in your target language. First you'll think smth in your native language, and then if you can, try to convert it to your target language. It'll be slow at first but the more you do it, the better you'll get.

For grammar, drills are inevitable. They're boring as fuck but translation and grammar practice are impossible to memorize any other way imo.

For math...get a tutor and drill the fuck out of your formulas, or find someone who specializes in math bc I don't lmao.

Instead of studying with multiple choice examples, to really learn turn it into a freeform question. Because multiple choice and testing well does not equal learning, and if you're in college you are there ideally bc you want to LEARN. You can combine flashcards to memorize important key bits. For example, let's say you need to study for an intro psychology exam. Your flashcards for psychoanalysis can have questions like: why is psychoanalysis a significant subject in the history of psychology? (with the answer card having bullet points like: laid foundation for modern therapy, emphasized subconscious's role in the mind, trauma, psychosexual relationship, id/ego/superego as "map" of the mind). If you can answer and bring up at least two or three of these points, you have a good understanding of the material.

Pretend you're teaching someone else the subject you're studying. I swear to god, I would pretend I was tutoring my f/os and I would even talk to the babies at my daycare job about what I was studying in Japanese that week. I would teach my dogs and my fish and my snails. As long as you're talking out loud, you're making yourself summarize the thing you're studying and realize what you need to work on. If you can explain it in simple terms to someone who knows nothing about it, you've studied it enough.

Use a Pomodoro timer to give yourself small breaks. Also it's nice to use apps like Forest or just an Excel sheet to track how much you study each day. Like I wanted to track how much I study languages, so I made an Excel sheet to track how many minutes I study since there are some general estimates of how many hours of studying it takes to reach higher levels of fluency in certain languages. Plus it helps me stay motivated to see how much I've studied each month.

On that note, ten minutes of studying is better than zero minutes. Instead of beating yourself up for not studying an hour or more, or even thirty minutes, make time to do small study sessions frequently.

If you're studying Japanese in particular or another language with a writing system you need to memorize like kanji, you NEED to divide your study time writing or else you will get overwhelmed. Like grab a kanji workbook, and pick one to work on. Write it a few times on a practice sheet or the practice spaces in the workbook, then go do something else for ten or twenty minutes. Then go back and do more kanji. The whole point is to frequently write the character so that you develop muscle memory and can remember the basic stroke order.

Don't make your notes pretty, make them useful. I love color coding so much but you need it to work to your advantage. Like I personally do blue for titles, red for important key info (usually just underlining in red or adding a little red star).

Don't be afraid to get stupid, because stupid silliness helps you remember. You know I know the Russian word for fish (it's рыба, or "reeba")? Because in my flashcards for beginner Russian, I made a shitty Microsoft Paint edit of Reba Mcentire's head on a stock photo of a fish. If it helps you remember, it helps you remember.

#sloot's essays

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hungwy · 4 months

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canmom · 2 months

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japanese self-learning has stalled so hard, but I really want to get back into the swing of things. so... the starting point is to clear out the queues on wanikani and bunpro, sure, but I also need to like... start getting lessons on italki, build an immersion practice, try and read manga untranslated. all things I've only dabbled in so far.

as a starting point, I reckon i might try catching up on the dunmeshi anime unsubbed. I know how the story goes already. it's a pretty broad-appeal anime, so I expect the language won't be too obscure for the most part. and it does have the advantage that I don't have to wait for a good fansub to drop x3

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rigelmejo · 2 years

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I see posts all the time on languagelearning Reddit saying "I'm building a language learning app, what features would you like to see."

And while my niche interest means I'm always interested in specifically click-dictionary tools like LingQ, Idiom, Pleco, Redlang, Languagecrush... the reality is those apps already exist, and already are good enough for what they're used for. I even can set up a Reader app not intended for language learning, Moonreader Pro, to give me click definitions and read text aloud using text to speech. So more reader apps wouldn't really fill any missing need. Sure, a better designed reader app might have better dictionaries and some graded reading content with real person recorded audio, but it would just be offering some changes within an app niche which is already filled.

Then, I see a lot of app makers always go for making a beginner app. This niche is oversaturated to hell, and if you make an app here then it's unlikely to be successful if the language you make it for already has a course on Duolingo, Lingodeer, or Babbel. So while this may be a worthwhile endeavor if you want to make an app for a language with no other easy to find resources, it's not going to be anything special if you do it for languages already on the above 3 apps.

App makers consider making flashcard SRS type apps. There is potential appeal to this if they can make something offering unique better resources. But for many languages, Anki or Memrise or Clozemaster is going to have courses already which cover 2,000 words to 20,000 words in sentence format, with audio. User made courses on anki and memrise cover a plethora of niche needs, clozemaster has made updates to show some grammar info and a radio mode where you can listen to sentences (which are features I like a lot). There's also already specialty apps for learning Kanji for Japanese and hanzi for chinese, if a user doesn't like anki or memrise for studying characters, and those specialty apps work fairly well. Skritter for hanzi, WaniKani for japanese.

Areas where there is room for more apps and a need for more apps:

Grammar guides. It's considered a "boring" part of language learning, and maybe that's why so few apps teach it. You can occasionally find a memrise or anki user made course addressing grammar, but aside from bunpro for Japanese I have not seen many apps purposely aim to teach most of the necessary grammar points for X level of ability in a given language. Lingodeer aims to teach some grammar, but like duolingo it teaches a pathetically small amount. So more apps which have goals of actually covering all grammar points in Beginner language use A1 A2 (HSK 1-4, etc), and ideally Intermediate language use B1 B2, would serve a need that other apps aren't covering much.

Parallel texts, graded readers, with audio, for Intermediate Learners (B1 level at least). Do you see a pattern? That most apps are catered to beginners only, unless it's a flashcard app? Yeah. Now again, in this area many tools can be used to serve this need. I can make most eReader apps do this if I put in a lot of my own work finding my own graded reader, my own audio or use text to speech, and finding a click dictionary. LingQ serves this need and I have heard has pre-made content that goes up from beginner to Intermediate, but also that content is not equally good quality for all languages. Just like how duolingo has good stories for some languages and not others. Apps fitting this niche like du Chinese work great for their specialized languages but not for others, so there is some need for more apps overall which cover this kind of content up into Intermediate language learning levels.

And finally, the most useful app a person could make? Well in my opinion, it would be an app somewhat like Duolingo or Lingodeer. But it would make sure to actually cover grammar points and words in A1, A2, B1 (and in a dream world also B2 content) and the other languages equivalents. Almost no apps have actual lessons made for B1 levels or above, and B1 is when learners start to be able to learn by simply reading, listening, speaking, writing IN the language. Most apps cover A1 content, maybe up to A2 if lucky, then dedicated learners have to come up with some way to bridge the gap from that beginner zone into Intermediate so they can start trying to read, watch shows, listen to audios, and having conversations about topics beyond tourist stuff/basic info. I would also personally love if such an app had a way to skip levels/test out of levels, so beginners could start the app and keep going while other learners could start wherever their last things learned had left them. I'd also personally love if the app had dense lessons, as in covered a lot of words/grammar points per lesson. I know this could be a negative to some people so it would be fine to not do that, but I know for me anki/memrise/clozemaster type apps cover so much content in a short amount of time compared to apps like Duolingo which cover so little information per minute. That demotivates me, that so little information is learned per time. And since currently such apps like duolingo only tend to go up to A2 beginner information maximum, it feels like it takes a year or more to cover beginner level material that could be covered so much faster. Meanwhile after that year or more, the app is finished and leaves you with no Intermediate level information so you are still going to need to self study some more to get to a point of comfortably being able to read or watch things. Duolingo and Lingodeer also tend to teach 2000 or less words in an entire course (some of duolingos best courses like Spanish may contain 3000 words). 2000 common words is the minimum to try breaking into B1 type activities, and duolingo lingodeer etc don't particularly teach the most common words... just 1000-3000 words generally. For a learner trying to speed through A1 and A2 material so they can get to Intermediate study, it's more efficient to get a Teach Yourself book with audio (usually has 2000 useful words and teaches some grammar) or a textbook for A1 and A2 that includes enough vocab, and work through the books. The books will take maybe 3-6 months each (or less if you do them faster), and by the end you'd have covered more information than duolingo in a typical years use, be prepared for an A2 type test, and be as close to B1 as you can be so when you start studying at the Intermediate level you have less gaps in knowledge (less lacking of some grammar points, less lack of vocabulary).

There's so few apps that actually cover B1 level (or even some of A2 level). So many apps label some content "intermediate" that is A2 kind of content, not B1 kind of content (this happens especially with languages like Chinese and Japanese, I've seen apps labeled intermediate graded reader apps for chinese with stories that only contain 300 characters... when 1000 characters would be more realistic intermediate level). So many apps already make themselves in similar structure to duolingo, lingodeer, babbel. If any of those similar-apps actually covered the information those apps lacks? That new app would fill an unmet need and become the Go To app for the languages it covered. If the app made sure it covered all grammar AT beginner A1 A2 levels, covered grammar at B1, covered all words in the usual A1 A2 B1 type language tests (which to a degree overlaps with most common words but not entirely), then their app would be the best. It would be all people would need as a main study material to pass real fluency tests, to get to B level intermediate where some countries require for going to school or working in said country. It would cover enough material for people to transition to a formal class or book later if needed, to transition to immersion in the language and using the language directly at the end of app usage. Which is what learners need to get to, if they're going to learn a language enough to use it beyond a trip or surface level introduction.

But maybe that's why no such app exists. If an app did get you past A2, you'd know enough to start self studying while using the language somewhat comfortably, know enough to transition to Intermediate classes if you need any particular certification. But if you learn the language enough to use it, then you will go USE it instead of spending more time grinding on an app. Is that why apps only cover beginner material? So you can never learn enough to start learning on your own with some comfortability? But at the same time... plenty of people use anki and memrise well into 20,000 words/sentences, so there's Intermediate and advanced learners who would keep doing lessons on apps and reviews.

If the goal of your app is really to get people to LEARN the language, then eventually you need to offer Intermediate material and help learners get to that point. Duolingo was supposed to be made to fill a niche of schools failing to teach enough for people to use a language they study. Well it doesn't. It teaches some A1, sometimes some A2, but its never enough on its own to make someone able to use a language to enough of a degree to read/write/speak/listen to general things. It may help motivate people to start learning so later they find their own more in depth study materials and make their own progress into Intermediate. But at present it does not teach enough information to take people into the Intermediate range. (*with their most in depth courses with extra words like Spanish, French, that also have cognates for some other language speakers, it may help people get to A2 enough they're willing to attempt to try reading/listening/chatting with people enough to learn from those activities until they're B1, but duolingos content itself doesn't take people to Intermediate level).

#apps #rant #language apps #language learning #article #review #i read an article on duolingo today and it pushed me over the edge.#duolingo is not enough to learn a language enough to use it. its a failure on that front #i find it so annoying theres such a lack of material at a2-b1 level. which is the poiny #when people can start learning from USING the language #so if learners just were taught A2 fully and some B1? theyd learn enough info #to much easier transition into learning by using the language

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peistudies · 1 year

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かもしれない - Might, maybe, probably (Colloquial: かも or かもしらん)

Plain Verb + かもしれない［い］Adjective + かもしれない［な］Adjective + かもしれない Noun + かもしれない

*To make polite, change ない to ません (かもしれません)

This one is sooo easy. SCORE! You plop it on the end of any sentence to express uncertainty. No fancy conjugating or funny business. Just make sure you’re adding it to plain forms (not です or ます). Amazing. Here's a couple example sentences.

このいい服を買えば、人気になるかもしれない。If I buy these nice clothes, then I might become popular.

彼は何にも調べないで、日本に行くかもしれない。He might go to Japan without researching anything.

#Japanese grammar #Japanese N4 grammar #N4 grammar #intermediate japanese #beginner japanese #review japanese #review japanese grammar #langblr #studyblr #japanese langblr #japanese studyblr #study japanese #learn japanese #bunpro #peistudies #nihongo

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greetings-inferiors · 5 months

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hi :3

ive seen you mention studying japanese a few times, and as i recently got into it again, i was wondering what kind of resources you use? and how you go about it in general.

So I’m not the best source at the moment because I’ve been putting it off for half a year at this point (but surely I’ll start again soon) but here’s how my Japanese learning journey’s been:

First of all, I started with Duolingo. I know I know. But I didn’t do any of the actual main things. What I used it for was to learn hiragana and katakana, which it EXCELS at, because they’re just phonetic and have no meaning attached, unlike kanji which have WAYYYYY more nuance, and I found Duolingo did anything other than literally learning what each hiragana and katakana sounded like really poorly. I haven’t touched it for two years however, so idk how it’s changed. But it got me to a point where I can read any hiragana and katakana instantly, and can recall and even write the most common hiragana and some katakana. Obviously recollection is a lot harder, and I struggle to write uncommon characters from memory, but still, it did it really well.

When I actually started studying kanji, wanikani was the best thing. You learn radicals (the bird making up kanji), then wait a bit before reviewing them, then wait a bit longer before reviewing them again, then you unlock kanji made up of those radicals, then you review them, then you wait a bit longer then review them again, then you unlock vocabulary involving those kanji, then you wait a bit and review them, etc. then you level up and unlock new radicals. It’s a really really good system, and I got to level 13 out of 60 before going on hiatus for exams (and haven’t started again to the point where I’m starting exams again soon 😭). It is paid past level 3, either monthly, yearly, or lifetime (lifetime’s worth it believe me, especially since it should be on sale around now)

They’ve also (in the time I’ve been gone) added grammar, which is something I struggled with as I hadn’t invested money into bunpro, a similar site focusing on grammar (I tried it but didn’t like it as much as wanikani, still good but wanikani is genuinely a brilliant site)

I’m also going to be getting some manga in Japanese, which is a great way to learn as it’s not only fun (because it’s manga) and easy to learn (as it’s designed for younger Japanese speakers), it’s also just really cool. Like damn I’m reading in a foreign language???? You also get to organically learn words instead of something like wanikani where you’re learning them pretty academically. You get to see the words in context and if you don’t recognise/understand it, you can look up the meaning of the individual kanji and try and piece it together yourself!

Overall I’m really trying to get back into Japanese, it’s something I’m genuinely passionate about and really enjoy doing, it’s just… a very daunting prospect. A downside of wanikani I didn’t mention is that if you don’t do your reviews they pile UP. I currently have about 1000 reviews, because I was a dumb stupid idiot and forgot to turn on vacation mode. So I’d either have to get through 1000 reviews (at my peak of obsession I could do about 100-200 on a good day, in the summer holidays) or reset to an earlier level (which I’m probably going to do, as the latest levels I didn’t commit to memory as much as the earlier levels so it’d be nice to relearn them).

I wish you luck in trying to get back into Japanese,幸運！^_^

#text post #randyposting #Japanese #日本語 #ask #ask answered

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noblemonsters · 1 year

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well im going to finally attempt to read a vn in japanese. i feel like im at the point where i cant stay motivated enough to do anki/bunpro/etc without actually engaging with the language

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doedipus · 8 months

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idk what the fuck is wrong with me. work is not that strenuous but I've been on my ass for at least 24 hours afterwards every day I've gone in. I feel like I've been on benedryl for the last week and it's driving me insane. I genuinely don't think I could hold down a Real Job if this is my body's reaction to doing basic housework two mornings a week.

#I got home yesterday and slept for like 3 hours #and then today I was half asleep for the session with the language gang and had to call off anime club to nap #I haven't been able to spend much time with bunpro etc all month because I've been too tired to function #and now I gotta balance a whole ass college class with needing to sleep an extra 4+ hours a day #not good!#nothing is going right!#I'm gonna fuckin die!

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notsodailykanji · 9 months

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I've Been Using MaruMori (Comprehensive Japanese Study Platform)

(Long post! Scroll down for pictures and see the link at the bottom if you want to check it out!)

My journey in learning Japanese has been a serious of fortunate accidents, stumbling upon one new tool/website after another. I spent about 18 months learning kanji on WaniKani from 2018-2020, and reached around level 26/60. Perhaps around 600 kanji and 2000 vocabulary words discovered, though not all learned. After taking a break for several years, I returned to Japanese study intermittently in 2022, but more consistently in 2023. WaniKani was useful for me in the sense that it finally provided a way to memorise kanji (through a spaced repetition system), and I am grateful for that. However, there was a problem: my grammar was stuck in beginner-intermediate, around mid N4. All the grammar I had learned in my entire Japanese learning journey up to that point was through two amazing mobile apps, Human Japanese, and Human Japanese Intermediate.

When I finished them both, I had a decent foundation in Japanese grammar, but my kanji and vocabulary knowledge was rapidly outpacing my command of Japanese grammar. I tried Bunpro for a time (a grammar SRS website), but I was already paying for a WK subscription, and I missed the tongue-in-cheek, entertaining walkthrough of Japanese grammar that I found in the Human Japanese series. HJ and HJI was relatable, fun, accessible, and made clear the passion the authors have for the language, which resonated with me as a learner. The HJ series was a beginning to a comprehensive Japanese tool. It taught kanji, vocabulary, and grammar all in one-place, with in-depth explanations, and even did quizzes at the end. Every chapter was concluded by introducing an element of Japanese culture (often food and scenic places).

When I returned to my old Japanese learning platforms, some of my friends told me about a new Japanese learning platform, Maru Mori. It aims to teach kanji, vocabulary and grammar all in one place. The grammar lessons are detailed, thorough, and interesting, having many of the same qualities of HJ and HJI. The website is leaving Beta soon, launching on August 12th, with grammar srs. As of now, N5 is complete, N4 is almost complete, and the site will eventually cover everything up to and including N1. The website will include mock JLPT tests, and eventually, pitch-accent drills as well. I've been using it since March this year, and seen it grow a lot in such a short space of time. See for yourself:

My cute little Maru panda on the Adventure Map, a journey around a scenic map interspersed with kanji, vocab, grammar lessons, reading exercises, and grammar conjugation drills.

The next reading lesson I'll have to complete tomorrow. Furigana toggle, audio, and English translations.

Kanji lesson pages showing mnemonics, and other supplementary information.

Part of the roadmap for Maru Mori (with much more on the way, but you can check the website for that).

What I've shown here in the screenshots is just a slice of what the site offers. Conjugation drills, crossword puzzles, and even wordle:

My Dashboard, showing some cool statistics. Right now I have about 70% of N5 material revised. Soon I'll reach the N4 region and start digging into new grammar. :D

If you made it to the end of this mammoth post, thank you for sticking with me and scrolling this far. I appreciate it. Let's take a moment to talk about why I made this post. My primary motivation is wanting Maru Mori to succeed and grow as a platform, because I truly believe in its potential. So much so, that I purchased a lifetime subscription back in March of this year. I want this website and company to succeed so that I can continue to study Japanese on it, all the way to N1 level. I want this to be the one and only platform I truly need, other than native exposure. In order for that to happen, I'm doing my part by trying to promote Maru Mori where I think it makes sense, when I can. So that it can grow as a company and continue to deliver just as it has in its launch so far. My secondary motivation is because I am passionate about Japanese language learning. I said I would come back to this blog when I found a method of studying Japanese that I could share with my followers (hello, if you're still around!), and for me, this is it. I want more people to try learning Japanese on this platform. I genuinely believe it is unique in its offering, in its potential, and in terms of user enjoyment while learning.

If any of this post has piqued your curiousity, MaruMori has a 14 day free trial, details are on the on-boarding page after you register for an account. You can register for Maru Mori here: https://marumori.io/register?rcode=komorebi

Yes, that is a referral code. Since I have a lifetime subscription already, I don't expect to get any remuneration from you signing up with my link, but I would appreciate it if you did :D

If you check out the site, let me know what you like and what you don't, I'll pass it on to the developer, he's very active in the Discord. (We have a great community which you should totally join!).

Until next time,

#studyblr #japanese #japanese langblr #langblr #japanese studyblr #notsodailykanji #language #language learning #marumori

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