I mean is this like Tinder? Do I have to swipe right?
Hello, everybody! Right off the bat, this video is not sponsored.
I just want to share a really cool resource with you,
which is the Bunpo App for Learning Japanese Grammar.
I discovered- Hello?
Oh, it's loading. Oh my gosh.
Let's get started. This app is called Bunpo and you can learn grammar
in Japanese from N5 all the way to N1.
It also teaches you the alphabet and basic vocabulary before you even start with grammar,
so you'll have a very good base.
I have decided to challenge myself to try and do every single level
and every single activity on the app.
I think we as language learners, we always wanna try all the shiny new things
and all the different kind of apps out there.
We kind of jump around a lot, so I thought,
"Okay, no no no, let me try to do something from the beginning all the way to the end"
and see how comprehensive this is as a resource.
I love that they structure the app in the way that,
let's say, here we have- here we have N3 and we've got Time.
So if I open Time,
it gives me three grammar structures
that are related to time. And once I open that,
I have the lesson there.
And I can track my progress and it will show you which ones you've completed.
So if I go to N5 for example,
You'll see I've completed everything,
and they fill with these little tick marks.
Pretty simple to follow.
So you can choose if you only wanna do one or two or three lessons a day
before you complete a section. And it's a good idea to do this app
in the order of the levels that there are.
Because it will build on what you've learned previously.
So on my Twitter, I actually made a thread a few months ago
tracking my progress on the Bunpo app.
and writing the pros and cons, as well as how much I did each day.
The pros I found is that Kanji is introduced very early.
I think that that is amazing.
A lot of Japanese learners ask me "When should you start learning Kanji"
I think as
early as possible so you can get used it. Once you know Hiragana and Katakana
So the way this app does it is pretty cool.
They don't teach you how to write Kanji though.
It's just how to recognize it. So you have to use the Furigana.
One con of the app as well, is that it's very difficult to find
where to turn the Furigana on and off.
For example, let's say I'm going into a basic lesson.
and you'll see that in Kana,
it's written [France]. And so this monkey
at the top right is the one that turns the Furigana
on and off. It took me so long to realize
what this monkey does. Something else I like about the app
is that the sentences get very complex very quickly.
Which sounds like a scary thing, but it's not
like Duolingo where you're just learning how to say like
"My dog eats purple bread"
I mean the sentences here are actually useful.
You can start to learn how to speak pretty early.
So if you're like writing these sentences down in a notebook or if you're
practicing them out loud, your progress will be a lot faster.
Probably, my favorite thing about the app is
how the grammar is explained in the lessons
before. So let me go to the N3
lesson for example. And I'm just gonna click on
Negatives.
Let's do the first one. So you get the
screens here that explain the grammar to you
before the lesson with some audio.
The biggest con for me is how buggy and slow this app can be. As you see, I am trying to play the audio
and it is just not playing even though my sound is on.
Once I do an activity and I answer a question,
The feedback screen takes like 3 to
4 to 6 seconds to pop up. So maybe just
try it on your device first before
buying a subscription. I don't know why you have to
swipe these cards
Cus' I mean is this like Tinder, do I have to swipe right
or swipe left. It doesn't matter which way you swipe.
Anyway, so grammar explanations
are pretty good and there's
that monkey again to turn it on and off. The green words
marked here are words that you can tap on
to understand the meaning. So these are new
words that are introduced into the lesson, so make sure you have the
monkey with his eyes showing , in order to
see these new words, if you might not be at that level yet.
Something really cool that I don't think a lot of people know
about this app is that you actually have access to
a live tutor. It is this little chat button
here. So I'm not gonna talk to this person
right now, but I believe it's the app creator the app developer.
Usually if you have a question about grammar, he will
explain it to you. Yeah, it kind of hard to find, but it's there
up in the top left corner of your profile. The
one biggest con, I guess, but maybe that's just me
not like using it effectively,
is the review section. It just piles up
so much. So how
it adds to your review is that if you get something wrong, it will
put it in your review. So sometimes if I like tap on the
wrong one by mistake, or like I'm not concentrating and I pick the wrong thing,
even though I knew it, it going into my review. So right now, I have
136 items to review and
it's just starting from like, the super basics, which is
very frustrating for me. There's no way that I can
choose what I want to review or not. And if you don't do
your review, it just keeps piling up. So 136 items
means in one sitting, I have to go through
all of these until it clears. So
it's good to do your reviews often and regularly.
Don't let it pile up like me because that just freaks me out.
The good thing about the review - a pro though - is it gives you tips
in the lesson notes. So let's say my review question is
[Bus____going hospital]
I'm going to the hospital by bus.
If I tap on Show Tips over here,
it gives me information on the particles. So if I got
that wrong for instance, I can learn how to use it
properly. Bunpo is
not free anymore. It used to be. It's about
$30 for a lifetime subscription. I think
that's really reasonable. You get textbooks for the same
price. I think it is a pretty awesome app if you don't have a
textbook. So you're gonna learn a lot of vocabulary.
And a lot
of grammar from the beginning. There's also audio
which is super super great. How do you actually use this app?
So my three tips
are to do the review exercises as
soon as you get them, so that it doesn't pile up.
To write down the things you get wrong. If you're
constantly doing something wrong in the review, have a notebook
for this app specifically and write it down.
And the other thing is to go through the grammar
explanations at the beginning of each lesson. It's easy just to swipe
those cards away, but if you get stuck on the harder levels,
it's better to read those grammar explanations first
before just diving into the activities.
Also best to be very consistent when using
this app. Do a little bit each day. When I was
using this app every single day, I realized that I was
getting faster at reading my Japanese.
So even though I've been learning Japanese for a few years, I do get
stagnant. So by just having this constant exposure on this app,
the whole time I was like "Oh my god, my reading
is becoming a lot faster". In summary,
so much content. You will learn a lot, but
it is repetitive and boring.
And the app tends to crash or be very slow.
I'm using Android v.9 on Huawei P20 Pro.
I think it's really awesome how
involved the developers are in the app. They're
super responsive to feedback if you wanna e-mail them,
if you have any questions to use the chat.
It's very, very simple so it doesn't have
imagery and stuff, but if you're super dedicated and you're really focused on learning grammar,
you can learn a lot. And for pretty much the price of a textbook, you're getting like
5 JLPT levels in one app. Overall,
I think it's awesome. I don't regret getting this app.
And that is pretty much all I can say about it. I hope
it was useful. Do check out Bunpo. They are available on
Andriod and iOS.
If there's another app you want me to review, please leave it in the comments and I
will check it out. Thank you so much for watching
and see you in the next video. Bye!