OMG, who brought up Lang-8 on this forum? Because I'm pretty sure I heard about it here, and I decided to go check it out - and there went my long Labor Day weekend! I was like, "Must. Stop. Writing... Must. Start. Consuming. Food... And. Water..."

I was quite amazed at how things work. I write a journal entry, and dozens of users from Japan just just swoop down on it like a swarm of locusts, correcting and scrutinizing every line, sometimes as many as four or five times. Then, get this - they start arguing among themselves on the page about which correction is better.

And I was late to work today because I wanted to finish composing another journal entry...

My correctors never argue. I do get a LOT of corrections, though... Even when the existing ones are what they'd say anyhow. I give them all the full 5 stars for the effort.

A moment of pride: My last entry only got 1 correction, and it's something that I think could have gone either way. (That's why my usual correctors didn't swoop on it.)

Sadly, I've seen a TON of English corrections that are wrong, or don't take regional differences into account. It made me realize that you have to take corrections with a grain of salt... They could be misleading or outright wrong. And if the person isn't a native speaker, ignore them altogether.

I'm addicted to correcting English.

I wrote one very short post in French, and now I'm struggling to think of something to write about =/

Yeah, definitely take some corrections with a grain of salt. At the very least, whenever I make English corrections, I always point out regional differences. I was a good English student, too, so I typically have grammar-nazi tendencies when I'm correcting.

I only get corrections from one or two members. Maybe my posts are too long.

wccrawford Wrote:My correctors never argue. I do get a LOT of corrections, though... Even when the existing ones are what they'd say anyhow. I give them all the full 5 stars for the effort.

I probably inadvertently friended some conflicting personalities. I was wondering about the stars, actually, and whether there's a just a shortcut to click once and give five...

bladethecoder Wrote:I'm addicted to correcting English.

I LOLed at this, but yes, it's good to give back. But since you're correcting your strongest language, it usually seems to be pretty quick - except in the cases where someone writes English very poorly, and they provide some Japanese that is really hard, like on some technical subject!

Hero of Time Wrote:Yeah, definitely take some corrections with a grain of salt. At the very least, whenever I make English corrections, I always point out regional differences. I was a good English student, too, so I typically have grammar-nazi tendencies when I'm correcting.

Most of the corrections are by ordinary people but you can tell that some of the correctors have very good Japanese.

Alas, the downside is that my RTK1 studies have just stopped dead in their tracks... But at least I'm picking up a lot of kanji via this route as well.

I've been a member for a looong time now. My first account there still had a 3-digit member number.
I also never run out of topics to write about. But that's because I rarely have time to write anything

I don't take the corrections too seriously (as in: I don't use them to study or anything).
For me, Lang-8 is more like a normal blog with the addition that people will tell you where you went wrong.
In my case it's "ha-ga" most of the time. I'll never get that figured out.

And like kazelee said,
if you're entry is too long, less people will correct it. They're all lazy, too *g*
I love to make long entries, but I try to hold back lately.

It's still awesome, because when I first started, even a few sentences took me forever and now I'm just writing/typing quite fast and　あっという間に I have an epic entry XD

I love Lang-8, and lately have sort of avoided it a bit because I get sucked in - it's pretty addictive for me as well. I have a few friends there whose journals are really enjoyable to read. There really are a lot of bad corrections imop there, and I try to point them out when I see them, and give reasons and examples that hopefully give the person a better grasp.

As for the corrections on my entries - I would go over them with my language partner, who is a good friend and knows my personality/what I'm trying to express. It was a good chance to discuss grammar points language usage/nuances etc., and I trusted her as the final word as she is a competent writer and used to be a teacher. She also could point out who was consistently good at correcting.

My level is too low for long entries, but chochajin's post is very inspiring. I try to make an entry ever week, but lately have not as I need to focus on much neglected grammar study before I start writing there again.

Just curious chochajin - when did Lang-8 start?

I can't remember exactly, but I think I've been a memeber since late 2006 / early 2007 when they just started out and still had tons of bugs and stuff

I would split long entries up if possible, correcting is pretty time consuming if you do it properly. and you can't really do half a post, it's all or nothing :$

When I first signed up on these forums (waaaay back in August), someone (Ice Cream, perhaps?) encouraged me to start a Lang-8 account. I was terrified!!! Me? Write actual sentences in Japanese??? I can't do that!!!

Well, it nagged at the back of my brain and finally, yesterday I took the plunge. What FUN! I've written 2 entries so far. Granted, they aren't quite exactly Pulitzer candidates, but I'm darned proud that I even tried.

I received corrections almost immediately, which was very encouraging. Some of the corrections included additional comments in Japanese. It'll take me a long time to decipher them but that is yet one more opportunity to expand my knowledge and vocabulary.

I tried to write using only vocabulary, kanji and grammar I already know. I wanted to write from my mind, without consulting a dictionary or grammar guide, the way I write in English. Needless to say, my entries were both very short . There was so much I would have liked to say but I just don't have the words or grammar yet. Lang-8 allowed me to put my learning into action but also highlighted for me how much of a Beginner I truly am.

To reciprocate, of course, I have corrected a few English entries written by Japanese people. I want to get comfortable enough to make my additional comments in Japanese but it will be a long time before that happens.

I'm still trying to understand exactly how it works. How do I find beginner English students? What do all the icons mean? Is there a standard use of the red and blue colors? Will signing up for a Premium membership get rid of all the "looking-for-love" ads (or am I the only one getting those :blush?)?

In any event, thanks, everyone, for suggesting I try Lang-8! And thanks, Mushi, for starting this thread!

caivano Wrote:I would split long entries up if possible, correcting is pretty time consuming if you do it properly. and you can't really do half a post, it's all or nothing :$

I've gotten a few half posts. I've started splitting them up, recently, as well.

I like Lang-8, although I never know quite how to correct people - whether to just correct their grammar so their sentences make sense (and I'm thinking to myself "Well I wouldn't say it that way, but I suppose you could, it's not wrong.") or whether I should change it so it sounds like what I think a native speaker would say but then I worry that I'm just changing their sentences to what *I* would say, and kind of implying that something is wrong, when it really just sounds awkward to me (and this then involves changing their sentence structure around etc. and it sounds like I've written it rather than them).

I generally just correct grammar/misused vocab though, to be safe, so it makes grammatical sense.

holy crap, i made a journal entry and my inbox is filling up like nuts lol!
Definitely helps putting an English translation with the sentences when you write I suppose.

Tefhel

I think the way to do that is to give them a little more information. Explain why you made the correction. "your sentence is not wrong the way it is, but I think a more natural way to say it would be........." It takes a lot longer to do that , but they get more out of it.

A lot of people keep randomly adding me which I don't like.

"I can help you with your Japanese if you help me with my English." I don't like it when it seems like rote correction. When they actually comment about the entry it definitely feels like they read it and they understand what you were trying to say.

Dual-language is a must. Helps my entries a lot.

For the last year since I started using it, a lot of people would come and go but there is a consistent group of people that would correct my entries and I think that's definitely more worth it than to have random people come by and correct it because they know what kind of style you're going for.

I wish the correction comments actually worked so I could tell people what was wrong with that correction...

I love the idea of Lang-8, but I find it hard to keep writing even semi-regularly. It's so difficulty to try to come up with a topic that would be at least somewhat interesting, but also within the realm of my as of yet limited active vocabulary and grammar.

wccrawford Wrote:My correctors never argue.

:lol:

Hashiriya Wrote:my inbox is filling up like nuts lol!

:lol:

You boys with your personal correctors and your nuts

Very cool. I just joined. Thanks.

Does any of you know how to get a listing in Lang-8 of the latest entries by people who have a particular combination of study language and native language? (I'm looking for those who are studying Spanish and/or English and whose native language is Japanese.)

Thanks!

Nuriko Wrote:You boys with your personal correctors and your nuts

don't hate!! there are plenty of personal correctors and nuts to go around!

gfb345 Wrote:Very cool. I just joined. Thanks.

Does any of you know how to get a listing in Lang-8 of the latest entries by people who have a particular combination of study language and native language? (I'm looking for those who are studying Spanish and/or English and whose native language is Japanese.)

Thanks!

I just joined Lang-8, too. Here's what I do to find Japanese natives who are studying English:

~ from my "home" page, click on the Lang-8 Contents tab (located in the top banner)

~ drop down to Lang-Match (it's the first option)

~ in the resulting page, there is a Search Filters box on the left. Use that to select Japanese natives who are studying English (or whatever you're searching for).

Alternately, from your Home page, if you look on the left, there is a link called "Entries awaiting your correction". If you hover your mouse over the person's name, a little pop-up will display their native and learning languages.

Perhaps there is a cleaner/easier way to do all this but that's all I've figured out in the 48 hours since I joined . Hope it helps you!

My question is, is there a way to distinguish language levels? Beginner, Intermediate, etc.?

*****************
Edited to correct a spelling error. Yikes, I'm correcting others???

Snowflake Wrote:Alternately, from your Home page, if you look on the left, there is a link called "Entries awaiting your correction".

That's great. That shows me a lot of stuff. Thanks!

(It's too bad that the site is unable to deal with the possibility that someone be fluent in more than one language, thereby making it more difficult for those people to help out all those they could help...)

gfb345 Wrote:(It's too bad that the site is unable to deal with the possibility that someone be fluent in more than one language, thereby making it more difficult for those people to help out all those they could help...)

You can still join the wordreference.com community, they're cool.
And you can post in any language you speak.