I joined Lang-8 yesterday, and I have obsessively been correcting other people's entries. I have yet to post my own entry. I'm definitely not good enough yet, as I only started learning Japanese around 2 months ago.

I really want to post something, but I don't want to sound stupid. I suppose I could search the dictionary for the necessary vocabulary words, but wouldn't that defy the whole purpose? When did you guys start writing your own entries? At what point did you feel comfortable doing it?

I'm sure if you start really simple, you can write something. How about saying your name, and a little bit about yourself or something.
My first post was something as simple as,

こんにちは、わたしはローレンスと言います。にほんごがすきです。よろしくおねがいします。

Lang-8 is the ideal place to look and sound stupid ... thats the whole point! It's a place for you to get better at not-completely-sucking-at-japanese. No-one is going to laugh at you for writing nonsense. Give it a go!

Thank you for the advice. I suppose you're right, I should start off with some basic sentences and then work my way up.

Oh and also do you thnk the premium membership is worth it?

The benefit of premium is that it bumps your posts so they get seen by more lang-8 users... It means you tend to get more corrections, faster. I stopped my subscription and i haven't really missed it.

squarezebra Wrote:I'm sure if you start really simple, you can write something. How about saying your name, and a little bit about yourself or something.
My first post was something as simple as,

こんにちは、わたしはローレンスと言います。にほんごがすきです。よろしくおねがいします。

Lang-8 is the ideal place to look and sound stupid ... thats the whole point! It's a place for you to get better at not-completely-sucking-at-japanese. No-one is going to laugh at you for writing nonsense. Give it a go!

You've really encouraged me lol! I will try as soon as possible

I just start to write. Broken japanese and everything. You'll get more out of the corrections if you know a bit of basic grammar, but when I started with lang-8 I just wrote. I did give it my best shot, looking up words in the dictionary and trying to put them together. As long as the correctors get the gist of what you're saying you know you're on the right track lol. some of the sentences were revamped entirely. I learned some things in the corrections and I would look up things I didnt understand or I would ask them for explaination but it's hard for them to explain to you in english. If I don't understand I will just leave it and come back to it later when I covered more grammar. The best part of it is that your entries are saved and you can go back later on and lightbulbs start turning on.

LittleRedRidingHood Wrote:Thank you for the advice. I suppose you're right, I should start off with some basic sentences and then work my way up.

Oh and also do you thnk the premium membership is worth it?

there is not an even balance on lang8 of people learning and correcting each language. as you might guess, english is pretty popular, and japanese, not as much. i notice some japanese users' essays will go unedited and i can't keep up, whereas i've never had an entry in japanese go completely ignored. so i don't think you will need a premium membership, as long as you're an active member in the community (and it sounds like you are with your laudable habit of correcting others' work). don't forget, you can friend and PM people there, so you can よろしく all over the place. i even met a skype language partner on lang8.

tashippy Wrote:i notice some japanese users' essays will go unedited and i can't keep up, whereas i've never had an entry in japanese go completely ignored.

I don't think this is necessarily a true indication of the popularity of corrections. As in, I have Japanese users on my list that quickly get upwards of five corrections, where I log in and really just post a comment because everything is done already.

I've found that the people that don't get corrections are people who don't add enough friends, people who don't continue to add friends when their current ones stop using Lang-8 (which seems quite common), and finally, people who just post and don't correct (or post 2000 word essays they want corrected for school).

I'm not saying you aren't correct, just that the reason people don't get corrections is a little more complicated.

True, I've also wondered about that. I've discussed with other users the possibility of different language backgrounds or cultural tendencies impacting the lang8 give and take as well. but i think you're right, being active and friending and correcting is the best way to go. reciprocality, でしょ。

Oh wow thank you everyone for taking the time to reply. Your advice is much appreciated. I suppose I should start writing my first journal entry. Thank you once again.

squarezebra Wrote:I'm sure if you start really simple, you can write something. How about saying your name, and a little bit about yourself or something.
My first post was something as simple as,

こんにちは、わたしはローレンスと言います。にほんごがすきです。よろしくおねがいします。

Lang-8 is the ideal place to look and sound stupid ... thats the whole point! It's a place for you to get better at not-completely-sucking-at-japanese. No-one is going to laugh at you for writing nonsense. Give it a go!

私もローレンスと申しますよ！

Anyway I used to write all sorts of rubbish into lang-8, in fact I still do haha! I wouldn't be embarrassed that's the purpose to get corrections! Even if you can only say a few things it's best writing them down to make sure you're saying them correctly.

I legitimately enjoyed correcting people's posts on Lang-8. Reading journal entries by Japanese people proved to be a very educational experience, even if thy were in English. I began to feel a little bad doing so much correction without putting myself out there for scrutiny. Finally I got out my first attempt at a 日本語 post. Oy! I got slaughtered, getting simple things wrong, having tons of people correcting the same mistake over and over (many of them likely as a courtesy for working on their journal entry). It takes a bit of courage to do it, but the whole experience really is worth it. I just wish I knew a little more grammar and vocabulary... but that's a problem many of us have I trust, haha.

You have inspired me to reactivate my sleeping Lang-8 account
I remembered how useful the corrections were. My common mistakes were related to particles and intermediate grammar. I even attempted to post something with advanced grammar....I bet they all got headaches correcting my entry

But it is a very good tool. You learn a lot even by reading other people's posts. You slowly realize which sentences sound natural, which do not. Things like that.

I promise I will get back to Lang-8

I recently started to actually add journal entries to lang-8 but I have been with lang-8 for ages. To post that first journal entry does take some courage but as soon as you do and see all the friendly and helpful Japanese people correcting you, you will quickly get over the fear. I've been at it for 2 weeks now and made a Japanese friend that I often talk to on Skype. Best thing that's happened to my learning in a long time!

Never be scared about making mistakes, I have been accidentally rude or said some very wrong words (most recently 愛人 instead of 恋人) many times but they either laugh it off or give you an amazing correction, both as good as each other.

Check out my profile http://lang-8.com/39119 if you want a confidence booster, my grammar and sentence structure is very lack luster but I have come along leaps and bounds solely due to lang-8. Good luck

*edit just noticed how old the original post was, oh well

As a native speaker of an uncommonly studied langauge, finding lang-8 friends isn't really that easy; there aren't many Japanese users studying Norwegian...

However, it seems that the Japanese users are quite eager correctors; none of my entries have remained uncorrected for more than 12 hours, whereas I'm still waiting for a correction on my first German entry. :p

Stian Wrote:However, it seems that the Japanese users are quite eager correctors; none of my entries have remained uncorrected for more than 12 hours, whereas I'm still waiting for a correction on my first German entry. :p

I have the same experience Well, at least, we are learning a lot from them.

I am quite bad in formal writing and I've learned a lot from their corrections.

@Stian: Link to your profile, I will immediately correct it

Thanks, but no thanks. The entry is 5 months old, and I've written a few others after that which were corrected, so I'm fine; Meine Rechtschreibung will für immer ganz schlecht sein.

clicky

Lang-8 looks different now. I like the new edit feature, but I'm confused by the new points system. Did they change it to try to help paying users more? Or just to make the points system more fun to encourage you to correct other entries? Or both?

Yep, you gain points by correcting and lose them by not being active or by posting an entry.

I don't think it makes any changes because those who pay will always be prioritised anyway regardless of whether they correct other entries or not.

(I do find it a bit funny though that the only Norwegian entries that still are uncorrected after being there for weeks are actually made by a premium user, because they are one-liners that makes no sense...)

Stian Wrote:Yep, you gain points by correcting and lose them by not being active or by posting an entry.

Damn :/ I had to quickly log into my account and see when my last entry was written. It's been 5 months since I was active. -_- who knows how many pts I've lost >_>

squarezebra Wrote:The benefit of premium is that it bumps your posts so they get seen by more lang-8 users... It means you tend to get more corrections, faster. I stopped my subscription and i haven't really missed it.

I suggest you post japanese phrases which you weren't sure if its correct or not.. Not simple sentences, because most likely if you post something simple that you already know.. It defeats the purpose of learning.. Go with something that complicates you! as what other members here just said, no one will ridicule you their for being bad in Japanese... So give it a shot!

I haven't used Lang-8 in ages. I've probably lost most of my points by now. :-D I may go back this week, as it would be a good way to test things I've learned in conversations with my italki tutor.

I tried using italki's Memo feature, which also supports corrections, but it's not nearly as good as Lang-8. The editing interface is far inferior and there's no space for entering a 母語 translation.

And yes, I know the "getting slaughtered" feeling. I'm trying to learn to live with it. I'm at the point where I know at least two people with whom I've communicated up until now using only Japanese. It's a wonderful feeling to know that you're communicating with someone in their native tongue, even if you may be (and probably are) doing it poorly.

[Zgarbas]

I started around my one year of serious study mark, I think. My first posts were extremely simple and still wrong, and frankly they still are. The improvement is noticeable, but since I haven't kept up with my posts as much as I'd like there's still a lot to work on; early posts were one short paragraph about the weather, these days I try to write quite a few paragraphs, and when I have the time to write proper posts I try to actually discuss things (my occasional posts on history are especially popular with the people who do the correcting, and I get to practice actual conversation since they want more details or want to talk about it, which is great). It's still full of mistakes, but still; the only way to improve is to practice.

This goes for speaking, too. I only had my first conversation in Japanese yesterday, and I'm currently at N2 level when it comes to reading. I could understand everything that was being said, but my responses were... well... horrible. I couldn't find the right words even though I was very familiar with them, I messed up my grammar a lot, I forgot to add politeness (and sometimes I'd even forget to add the copula!). If it wouldn't have been a teacher I was talking to I'm sure she would've been quite offended. No matter how much you practice other areas, unless you practice production in particular it won't really matter. This experience was pretty mind-blowing for me; I was expecting to have problems, but not to this extent...

In other words, don't wait for "the right time". Just write a few simple sentences. For now just try to practice the things you've learned. The point is to practice actually using the language, no matter how simple or full of mistakes it could be. You'd be amazed at how much it can help. It's also a fairly decent way to learn particular grammar points or vocabulary, since you know what you would want to actually use. I've mined multiple terms because I wanted to write about them on lang-8 but didn't know them.

pauro02 Wrote:

squarezebra Wrote:The benefit of premium is that it bumps your posts so they get seen by more lang-8 users... It means you tend to get more corrections, faster. I stopped my subscription and i haven't really missed it.

I suggest you post japanese phrases which you weren't sure if its correct or not.. Not simple sentences, because most likely if you post something simple that you already know.. It defeats the purpose of learning.. Go with something that complicates you! as what other members here just said, no one will ridicule you their for being bad in Japanese... So give it a shot!

What? I have no idea why you just quoted me, and have no idea how your comment relates to the part of me you quoted...