Lang-8 is now reaching a critical mass. It is super easy to post sentences, short stories, etc. in Japanese and get corrections with a quick turnaround. You can also post questions to natives fluent in English and get quick answers to your questions about Japan, too.

Here is a review of the site: http://www.tofugu.com/2008/05/14/the-bes...e-writing/

Here is a cool Japanese<->English community to join:
http://lang-8.com/?m=pc&a=page_c_home&l=...mmu_id=103

By the way, anyone else here using Lang-8?

I'm using it for Spanish and it's working fine for me to far. I'm going to use it for Japanese when I know enough Japanese to actually write things in it.

I joined up a couple weeks ago. It's been great for me so far.

I'm started using it the other day. Amazed at how helpful people are. Had my leaving party speech corrected for me there,. twice. Then the first woman came back and changed it all into desu/masu form (I had written in casual - I know it far better) for me.

furrykef Wrote:I'm going to use it for Japanese when I know enough Japanese to actually write things in it.

Haha...me too. I joined today and was going to start writing something, but I quickly realized I don't know near enough Japanese to write full posts.

I started helping people with their English, but even that is harder than I thought it would be. It's usually fairly straightforward to fix individual sentences, but making them sound natural can be tough sometimes. It's fun though. The only problem is it's keeping me from doing Japanese.

If anybody is advanced enough to start writing some short essays on a topic, a group of us are probably going to start... see the group mentioned above for details. And there are more native Japanese speakers than English speakers, so you'll get plenty of attention.

fluxcapacitor Wrote:

furrykef Wrote:I'm going to use it for Japanese when I know enough Japanese to actually write things in it.

Haha...me too. I joined today and was going to start writing something, but I quickly realized I don't know near enough Japanese to write full posts.

You'll probably get better at it. The first time I wrote posts and e-mails in Spanish, it took forever... probably an hour just to get a short message. I had to consult a dictionary and grammar book all the time and I was constantly worrying about my grammar. Now I write in mostly correct Spanish and consult a dictionary infrequently, just a couple of times per post. It's still more difficult than writing in English and it takes longer, and I'm not always able to express the exact nuance I want, but the important thing is that the huge roadblock goes away after a while.

Of course, it could be that you're right and in fact you don't know nearly enough Japanese. In that case, you know what to do: STUDY!

- Kef

Even if you feel your Japanese isn't strong, write up one or two sentences for the site and get feedback. It's a good way to start and to get used to writing in the language, and the feedback on the site is very quick and useful. No need to wait until you can write several paragraphs. I've corrected English postings, and to be honest the longer postings can appear too demanding, especially when there are too many mistakes, so I stay away from them. Others may only give a few cursory corrections. Someone may do a more proficient job correcting your Japanese when it is only a paragraph or so long.

I use the site too...It is really great.

Though there are some things that could probably be better to make the site look a little spiffier like mixi or facebook...but that is a very minor complaint.

The people on the site are very helpful.

I also found this site today...I think I'm gonna start using it to add audio to some of my lang-8 entries

http://voon.jp/

Yo, I started Lang-8 yesterday, correcting some portuguese texts. It is really nice! I was happy to do it. It takes so little effort and it is worth so much!
I'm still at least 6months before writing japanese but I wont wait till there to contribute.

johnzep Wrote:I also found this site today...I think I'm gonna start using it to add audio to some of my lang-8 entries

http://voon.jp/

It would be pretty cool to have Japanese people correct your posts and then read them back at native speed. I wonder if they'd be interested in that. I don't have any idea how to even ask though.

fluxcapacitor Wrote:

johnzep Wrote:I also found this site today...I think I'm gonna start using it to add audio to some of my lang-8 entries

http://voon.jp/

It would be pretty cool to have Japanese people correct your posts and then read them back at native speed. I wonder if they'd be interested in that. I don't have any idea how to even ask though.

You could just write in English - there are quite a few people who have excellent English.

Another review I just noticed:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/e...918a1.html

Here's a part review, part rant that I wrote on my blog about it.

http://japan-baby.blogspot.com/2008/06/lang-8.html

Oh god, there's already a lang-8 thread (^-^)>

I've been a member for over a year now and lately have been using it quite often and intend to do so in the future as well.
Now, my question to those of you who also use it is: How do you get most "profit" out of it?
After people correct your entries, what exactly do you do with the corrections?
I wanna use lang-8 as effectively as possible, but I'm unsure about what the best method might be.

Thanks for your answers (^-^)~❤

I've got an account, but it has been ages since I used it. I just can't think of anything interesting to write about.

hknamida Wrote:I've got an account, but it has been ages since I used it. I just can't think of anything interesting to write about.

Same here =(

Usually this is when it's best to have some topic chosen for you, and you write about 1 or 2 paragraphs about it.

Today's Topic:

Discuss the benefits of a common ground transistor to the common base transistor when it comes to the fidelity of the signal.

Ok, I'm assuming something more reasonable would be picked.

"What do you normally do when riding a train or bus or as a passenger in a car?"

I just write about my daily life in Japan. I usually just write what I write in my English blog as well.

Nodboy can/wants to answer my previous question? 。゜゜(>ヘ＜)゜ ゜。

I'm interested in what people do with the corrections as well. I could see that after spending a lot of time writing something, the sentences you made will be bouncing around in your head for a while, so if they are not correct, it could be pretty damaging.

Re what to do with the corrections: I read them out aloud (several times) and hope they'll stick. Also, I'll try to figure out where my grammar mistakes came from and remember how to do it correctly.

fluxcapacitor Wrote:It would be pretty cool to have Japanese people correct your posts and then read them back at native speed.

Hm, yeah, that'd be really cool.

Perhaps try posting your corrected scripts as a HIT on Mechanical Turk and ask to have it read out by a native speaker? You'll have to pay (like $3 or so), but it might be worth it. No idea how many native Japanese speakers there are on mturk, though.

Edit: I've successfully used MTurk to get a recording of a single Chinese text of several sentences; it cost me $1 and took 12h turnaround, though for bulk you'd probably be able to pay less. If anyone wants more info and my HIT template, PM me and I'll post it.

Anybody here putting the corrected sentences into your SRS program?

I'm not SRS'ing corrected sentences -- I'd think that's not systematic enough. SRS is mostly useful for easily learnable facts, so random sentences are probably not gonna do the trick. Unless of course you find some specific piece of grammar/vocab/kanji in the correction that you want to nail down.