During the quiz for 'Words of Japanese Basics,' I sometimes encounter vocabulary words in conjugated forms that I haven’t learned yet. I consistently get these wrong because I can't identify the stem. Is this something I just need to get used to? I haven't found a way to change this in the settings, so I’m guessing the answer is yes. For example, I’ve studied the first 11 lessons in Japanese Basics, but during a 'Words of Japanese Basics' quiz, I was presented with the word きいた. This is the past casual conjugation of きく, which I haven’t learned yet. While this might be a way to introduce me to conjugations before formally studying them, it also negatively impacts my mastery of the word.
It's something that frustrates me too. I'm 2/3 through Beginner Japanese now, so it's not impacting me as much now... I've learned casual, て-form, invitational, and some more now. But potential, volitional, and others throw me off when I see them.
I will say it has gotten easier though, since I'm more familiar with how to figure out how they change, even if I don't know what the heck the conjugation is. For example, if I see ま、み、め、も、I know it's conjugated from む。If that makes sense.
The ones that are the trickiest are て-form and past casual (た-form), which are essentially the same in construction, but way different than other forms. (I think if/when (conjecture) is also like these.)
If you can get a handle on recognizing the former types of conjugation but get really tripped up by て-form and casual past (た-form), you may consider skipping forward to take a look at lesson 15 in Japanese Basics (or through other resources, like the "te form song" on YouTube). Just to know that う、つ、る = って (った), ぬ、む = んで (んだ), etc.
Also, I periodically look at the conjugation tables for verbs from the renshuu dictionary (click on "godan verb" or "ichidan verb" in blue letters under the verb in the entry) just to get a feel for what the conjugations for that verb look like, even if I haven't learned them yet.
Thank you for your reply; I found it very helpful. On one hand, I’m glad I’m not the only one affected by these unexpected conjugations, but on the other hand, I wish it were just me! Anyway, it’s good to hear that dealing with this has gotten easier for you. Hopefully, the same will happen for me. I’m sure it will, though it may take a long time. I’ll take your advice and look at lesson 15, and I’ll check out the 'te form song.' Thank you for the suggestions. Today, I started looking at the conjugation tables. I found them intimidating, so I avoided them, which I realize was foolish. I won’t shy away anymore.
Another suggestion is to turn on the option for "Show redo button after wrong answer" in the settings under quizzing so you can redo ones you get wrong because of unknown conjugation when they trip you up, so it doesn't count against your mastery.
I had thought to address the issue with マイコーさん ages ago, but assumed it would be a logistical nightmare to program the app to not include sentences, etc., that contain unstudied conjugations at every unique student's level based on what lessons they may or may not have covered. I'm not a programmer, but it just seemed nightmarish to me to try to program something like that. I could be wrong. Anyway, I just decided to work with it as-is.
A question of clarification - are you referring to grammar questions (Japanese Basics) that have unlearned conjugations, or sentences picked up in sentence-based vocab questions that are too difficult, conjugation-wise?
As for me, I think the latter. I'm talking about vocabulary questions that use conjugated forms of the verbs/adjectives I need to identify, but the verb/adjective is conjugated with a form I have not learned yet. For an example, before I learned て-form and casual past conjugations, I might be quizzed on "what is the meaning of" something like 「ぬいだ」。But since I didn't know how to conjugate casual past yet, I had no idea what it could be, because my limited conjugation knowledge would think the い was replacing う、 and I had no idea what ぬう could be. That sort of thing.
EDIT: If I come across an example in a quiz, I'll screenshot and send it. I just can't think of a definitive example of the top of my head.
This is actually something that can be improved upon programmatically in the future. renshuu always does scanning based on word knowledge vs. sentence content, so also scanning against known conjugation forms should be doable.
A question of clarification - are you referring to grammar questions (Japanese Basics) that have unlearned conjugations, or sentences picked up in sentence-based vocab questions that are too difficult, conjugation-wise?
