Hello everyone.

I've been learning japanese through the widely spread methods on the RtK community: RtK/AJATT/SRS etc. Yesterday I joined lang-8 and already made two posts on my blog. But I was wondering how I'm supposed to learn from it?Should I SRS corrections or I will internalize then naturally?And is the sole act of practicing writing in japanese improve my skills on writing and speaking?

Are there many Japanese users who are learning Brazilian Portuguese?

Use their corrections in your posts.

bodhisamaya Wrote:Are there many Japanese users who are learning Brazilian Portuguese?

Quite a few actually o.o

bodhisamaya Wrote:Are there many Japanese users who are learning Brazilian Portuguese?

Hey, it's on MY list of languages to learn.

Brazil is kickin' it, man.

Perfect!
Write your entries in Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese so they can figure out what you mean if you chose the wrong vocabulary, or if your entry just comes across as nonsense.
Also, I just started posting Youtube videos as well so I can get my pronunciation and awkward way of speaking fixed too. Video journal

When you get a correction, look at the differences in how you phrased a sentence and the way the native speaker corrected you, then analyze why. Sometimes a sentence isn't wrong at all. They are just offering an alternate way of saying the same thing.

Well I didn't see anyone who was that fluent in Portuguese so I'm writing my entries in Japanese and English

my doubt is in how to utilize the corrections for learning
like they changed a など　for とか, will I remember the right use in the future?
Also would like insights on what are the prospects in my japanese skills by doing continous effort on output?will my speaking and writing hability yield sizeable improvements in a natural fashion?

Do they correct videoblogs also?
I`m becoming addicted to this shit, it`s so fun, like this old korean woman who is in Brazil and was quite shocked by the "liberal" sexual behavior of the northeastern region ;P

If English is not your native language, it might be doing more harm than good. As long as you include in the title of your entry Portuguese and Japanese, it will catch the eyes of those learning your language.
So far the video blogs have worked for me.

I also don't even know how I should correct English posts? Do you guys aim to make them sound as natural as possible? or are you out for just grammatical mistakes.

liosama Wrote:I also don't even know how I should correct English posts? Do you guys aim to make them sound as natural as possible? or are you out for just grammatical mistakes.

It depends on their level. I try to work around the vocabulary they used and make it feel I am correcting as little as possible. If they miss-spell a word, I just highlight the one or two letters that were changed. I only use blue to highlight and save red for side notes after the sentence so it looks less harsh.
Japanese users seem to like a comment after their post about the theme of their entry as much as actually being helped.

@liosama: Maybe you should correct their original sentence and leave it how they had phrased it, but then also include a note about what would be a more natural way to say it.

This is what I started doing:

I write an entry. If there are any words that I need to use, I use jisho.org and pick it out, even though I know it's wrong. That way when it's corrected I know what to actually use. I would then SRS that sentence.

If there are any pertinent grammar points that I can understand when they are corrected, I also SRS those. If I don't get it, I'll read through it but I just pass by it until I can sorta kinda understand it. If there are common words I keep using that pop a lot, I also SRS either the sentence or just the word.

Sometimes I SRS the comments they leave, again, if I can sorta understand it but not really. If I have a question on a grammar point, I'll usually ask them... maybe in a message or something. Sometimes I'll also read their blog and SRS a bilingual sentence if it helps me understand something later.

I reply in my own journal in Japanese in Japanese only. If there's someone who makes corrections or writes interesting comments, I try to add them... it helps a lot because there are a lot of journal entries written by Japanese that go uncorrected. I kinda feel bad for them =(

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When I correct someone, I try to make it natural sounding while making as little alteration as possible. Sometimes it means deleting whole sentences. If I need to, I'll say it's "more natural." I write corrections in blue and I just delete what's unnecessary. I just use blue because it feels nicer than seeing a wall of red. =) I always try to leave comments on what the blog is about, and maybe a grammar point if it's something egregious, like saying "I have bad memories" instead of "I have a bed memory." I make comments in English for English blogs.

I also see bodhisamaya a lot on the blogs I read =)

kainzero Wrote:This is what I started doing:

I write an entry. If there are any words that I need to use, I use jisho.org and pick it out, even though I know it's wrong. That way when it's corrected I know what to actually use. I would then SRS that sentence.

Whenever I'm writing and I need to use a new word that I don't know, I usually check in the Tanaka Corpus for its usage just to get a general idea of the connotations and nuances behind it. That's about all I use the Tanaka Corpus for.

Btw thanks Shiro and Bodhisamaya and kainzero =D

liosama Wrote:Whenever I'm writing and I need to use a new word that I don't know, I usually check in the Tanaka Corpus for its usage just to get a general idea of the connotations and nuances behind it. That's about all I use the Tanaka Corpus for.

I check the sentences part of jisho.org which uses the Tanaka Corpus, but sometimes it misses the nuances that a native speaker will tell you about.

I remember using a word thinking it meant "members" like "members of a board," but when I wrote that, they commented that the word was more used for scientists and research assistants in college.

That's one advantage Lang-8 has. =)

liosama Wrote:Whenever I'm writing and I need to use a new word that I don't know, I usually check in the Tanaka Corpus for its usage just to get a general idea of the connotations and nuances behind it. That's about all I use the Tanaka Corpus for.

Btw thanks Shiro and Bodhisamaya and kainzero =D

I think it was Stephen King that offered up this bit of advice for writers. "If you have to look up the word in a Thesaurus, it's the wrong word. There's no exception to this rule."

I wonder if the same concept could be applied to writing in a foreign language. If you need to look the word up, you shouldn't use it .... yet.

The thesaurus rule would seem to apply to only ones native language. If the word is in your native language, and you are a writer, and even you don't know the word, chances are your readers don't either. That writer will not sell many books (or have many of his forum posts read) unless he is someone really clever like Mark Twain. I never understood the vocabulary Twain used growing up but the way he put them together so even simple folk could understand was genius.
If that rule applied to foreign languages, you would never speak or get a journal done. Unless you just spend years listening and reading with no output first. Lang-8 readers will change your vocabulary if it is obscure.

Yea you should not shy away from using a few new words here and there, you want to make progression sometimes after all. However I do think there is some truth in that rule. You shouldn't overdo it! Sometimes I come across an entry which I barely can make sence of. Usually these include a lot of rare words, mixed in with very bad grammar structure. I often can't really give much useful feedback on those kind of entries.

So yea, nothing wrong with leaving your 'comfort zone', but your entries should also not include vast amounts of looked up words.

Thanks　for answering questions

so anyone who used lang-8 blogging feature could tell about the results achieved?

I was initially adding corrected lang-8 sentences from my journal entries into my SRS, but I soon stopped doing so. While I still feel I learn a lot from the corrections I get on lang-8, something keeps me from feeling enough certainty about them to put them in the SRS--especially when two different posters have different corrections on the same point within my entry.

Perhaps it comes from this: when I'm correcting posts in English, I often notice other English corrections that are awkward or incomplete. In other cases, I've seen a few different English corrections from separate posters for a single point, all of which are grammatically correct, but each of which has a slightly different nuance or connotation. I can only assume that the same thing happens with any corrections made to my Japanese on lang-8. Am I being overly strict or skeptical here? I'm not sure. But I don't want to put anything into my SRS without a reasonable confidence that it's bonafide.

So instead of directing the corrected sentences into my SRS, I try to use the target language in my next post, often using it with a different topic or testing it out in a different context. The responses to the follow-up let me fine-tune my understanding about the target. If I still want to add something to my SRS, I can then run a web search on the target word or grammar, get some more examples, and hopefully choose one from a source I can trust.

I just had a look at some of the entries in French and what I saw doesn't fill me with confidence to use lang-8 to improve my Japanese. Some corrections are even worse than the original sentences! Most of the time, they are just overzealous and try to fix every little detail while changing some nuances in the process.

In any case, SRSing from that would not be a good idea. The sentences were originally written by you, so they might still be a bit unusual even if they are corrected.

If you are only writing entries in Japanese, a frightening portion of your corrections are going to be wrong. The native speaker is just guessing what you mean to say and will make up something just so the sentence makes sense. Other times a sentences will be grammatically correct but not your intended meaning, and so go uncorrected.
Japanese people understand English far more what they read than what they can create themselves in journals. If your native language is something other than English, use it as well.

I am not a big fan of putting sentences into an SRS anyways. Skip the time consuming middle man and just read new sentences every day. It is a more natural SRS.

I think lang-8 is a great tool on its own, it will definitely increase your output skills, but I don't think its a good source for 'native-like' sentences. If you correct a few entries yourself, you usually see that you yourself also can't make an entry totally 'native-like'. At least that goes for me, I can help people correct grammar and spelling errors, and help them make their posts a bit more native like, but most of the time the end result still is slightly 'off'.

So no need to shy away from lang-8 all together, but I wouldn't advise SRSing it.

I agree that one should write the entry both in the target and native language. It helps solve a lot of problems with nuance.

Sort of related: On sharetalk I've been doing chat and e-mail feature. They write in Japanese and I respond in English. This allows more verbose chats and longer e-mails. In addition, what each of us in e-mail also do is translate the response into our native language.

zanzibar Wrote:Perhaps it comes from this: when I'm correcting posts in English, I often notice other English corrections that are awkward or incomplete. In other cases, I've seen a few different English corrections from separate posters for a single point, all of which are grammatically correct, but each of which has a slightly different nuance or connotation. I can only assume that the same thing happens with any corrections made to my Japanese on lang-8. Am I being overly strict or skeptical here? I'm not sure. But I don't want to put anything into my SRS without a reasonable confidence that it's bonafide.

I thought about that too... but then I thought about how there's many ways to say the same thing:
"I took a walk with my dog."
"I walked with my dog."
"I went on a walk with my dog."
"I brought my dog along for a walk."
"My dog came along with me on my walk."

For me, I'd like to learn all the different ways instead of focusing on one. Sure, the nuances are different, but that's something that we need to figure out by practicing it over and over. For me, the SRS serves as a reminder, not a concrete "this-is-right-at-all-times-so-never-deviate-from-it" kind of thing.

Codexus Wrote:I just had a look at some of the entries in French and what I saw doesn't fill me with confidence to use lang-8 to improve my Japanese

I feel that if many people correct it, you can at least get a good feeling of what's supposed to be said. That, and there are a LOT of Japanese people there. Look at how many people are asking for help with English, there are so many unread entries that aren't commented on. If you post a Japanese entry, you usually get replies within an hour. You can even ask them if you don't understand a correction.

It's not perfect, but I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages and that we should stop worrying about how to get absolutely perfect sentences...

How many of you are using lang8 as a major component of your studies? (say 25% or more of your active study time)
While I think some output is beneficial to exercise the japanese part of your brain, the majority of learning comes from input. If you're spending a too much time writing on lang8, that's a lot of potential input time going to waste. Also I wouldn't take peoples' corrections too seriously. Many of the corrections will unhelpful or even completely wrong. For example, if a sentence is grammatically correct but conveys the wrong meaning, will it get corrected? if no, then you're getting positive reinforcement of a mistake. Often correcting the grammar will lead to a grammatically correct but odd sounding sentence, and again the conveyed meaning will not necessarily match the intended meaning. Even if you write a version in your native language, there's a good chance the Japanese reader will misunderstand the English. There is a bit of a myth believed by many that the Japanese are good at reading/writing but not speaking/listening. The fact is for most learners reading is of course easier than listening, but most Japanese still suck pretty badly at both (lack of input). I think you should just trust that if your overall comprehension of japanese is improving then your output is also on an upward trajectory. Focusing heavily on training output is not effective. Just look at the eikaiwa industry in Japan as proof of that.