掲示板 Forums - How much grammar to study? / Why do my grammar quizzes show words I do not know?

Grammar progression is deceptive. Given your average textbook (or JLPT level), you may study 600-1000 words, a hundred kanji, and 20 grammar "expressions". Unlike the first two, grammar expressions are a way to describe a much broader concept that can be used in different ways, in various tenses/politeness levels/etc.

So, with renshuu's grammar packs (Japanese Basics, Beginner Japanese, Pre-Intermediate Japanese, and Intermediate Japanese (coming in Fall of 2025), you have a pair of schedules that are meant to be studied in tandem. That is, For any given lesson (as an example, "Finished/Not yet" in Beginner/N5), you have only 2-3 expressions, but 29 vocabulary terms)

It is expected (and mentioned when you first start a vocab/grammar pack) that you study ALL the new terms in a vocab lesson before moving onto the grammar. This is because the vocabulary lessons will contain every word that you will see in the grammar quiz questions. If you are getting hung up on words you don't know, it makes it difficult to focus on the new grammar.

So, what should I watch out for?

By default, renshuu limits how many new terms you can learn in a day or week (of course, you can customize this). Depending on your settings, it may take several days to clear out all the new terms in a lesson, especially if you have a decent set of terms to review.

So you're looking at your dashboard, and your vocabulary schedule is maxed out on new terms for the week. The grammar feels "so short" because it's (at the beginning) just a few terms, maybe 10-12 in the entire schedule. So you think "I'll just advance to the next level, pick up some more grammar."

Since you still have new words to learn, that means you are advancing into new grammar questions that are going to see, leading to confusion and disappointment. You may even go through several grammar lessons, still feel like it's not that much (20-25 grammar expressions), and you now have 200-300 unlearned words that are appearing in your grammar quizzes, making it harder and harder to progress.


What should you do?
It may go against what you feel like, but *slowing down* on the grammar progression will let you absorb is much better, feel more confident about your Japanese, and not want to give up. Grammar takes time to sink in.

If you have more time that you want to put towards studying, consider bumping up the new term limits for your vocabulary, and/or start/continue your kanji studies. You can never have enough of those two!


Although we hope to add more in the future, renshuu has just under 1,000 grammar expressions available. That's through very advanced levels. At the same time, most people will learn 12-20k (or more) words. So, very roughly averaged out, you might think of aiming for 10-15 new words for every grammar expression you learn. You cannot really plan learning in that way, it's just a way to visualize how "little" grammar there really is, and how much you can slow down on it and still make significant progress.

I just started the Beginner/JLPT N5 Grammar lessons and it feels like the sentence quizzes are a lot harder than the Japanese Basics quizzes.

I'm on the first lesson ("Frequency Words") and it goes over frequency adverbs working with action verbs. But a lot of the quiz questions are not dealing with frequency adverb + action verbs, and quite a few use grammar that's not covered or barely covered in the lesson or the previous Japanese Basics lessons.

• frequency adverbs working with nouns, adjectives, and existence verbs
• casual, present negative verbs (ない)
• use of と思います
• use of ので
• use of two は (e.g. 今週はあまりサッカーはしない)
• use of の (e.g. たくさんのお金は別に欲しくない)

I know 思う and ので are part of the lesson's vocab but they have their own grammar that has not been taught yet. I think I should be approaching the N5 grammar lesson pack differently from the Japanese Basics lessons, but am not sure how to go about it.

I go at a very slow rate of one grammar lesson per week.

Thanks, will do!

The grammar library (those are those usage patterns you copied in) will, as most dictionaries/references to, tend to use casual/dictionary forms when available. However, if the casual forms have not been taught in the renshuu lesson, then I would say they should not be appearing.

What does it mean to "study ALL the new terms in a vocab lesson before moving onto the grammar"?

I thought that the terms in the next grammar lesson would be shown in the vocab schedule. However, if I disable the daily new term limit on vocab, it shows all the terms in the schedule for learning (e.g. hundreds). Should I be doing all the vocab in a schedule before starting the associated grammar?

Thank you! I think the issue was that I hit schedule all on the "Words for Beginner Japanese" group. With only one list added at a time it showed the expected 25-50 new vocab terms for the first lesson.

Is this the correct way to use these schedules, adding one list at a time? I'm getting a message in my inbox now recommending me to add the "Words for Pre-Intermediate" schedule even though I've only finished the first list on Beginner, so I'm not sure.