Hi guys and gals. I recently jumped right in and joined lang-8. I've mostly been correcting English journal entries, and I've found it to be a nice experience, especially when the writer is appreciative of my corrections. I guess it's not unusual to get requests for chatting through skype. I'm not too keen on going the skype way, but I wanted to hear of your experiences. Have you used skype to chat with your contacts and complement the lang-8 (or other language networking site) resources? How did it go for you?

I've got 2 Skype language partners that I met through Lang-8. I enjoy chatting with both of them, and they both make sure we spend time on both English and Japanese. One of those partners has about a dozen partners she regularly talks to!

What you get out of it will depend on what you put in. I'm super ultra lazy. I speak as little Japanese as I can get away with. Still, when explaining things, sometimes it's necessary to use Japanese to help them understand... And sometimes, to explain something to me, they don't have the English and they have to use Japanese. In short, it's just about impossible to avoid actually getting some practice.

I recommend trying it. It can't hurt at all, and it can definitely be rewarding.

I recommend it too. It's a lot of fun. Most Japanese I speak to are quite reluctant to use English, so it's a great chance to practise you're speaking skills.

As long as you don't get someone too clingy then you'll be fine. I haven't added anyone from Lang-8, but I have met people through SharedTalk. There really is no downside so I'm not sure why you ask. If you talk to them you'll have met someone new, and if you hate them you can just block them or whatever.

Thanks all for the feedback. I'm a bit shy which is why I hesitate, but I might eventually give it a try.

BTW, I've been reading some more lang-8 entries, and I noticed that it is not unusual for members to treat their journals like "real" journals. I've read entries where people pour their hearts out, so it seems that the language learning part is not always the main focus of some members. (I can't see myself correcting entries like those.) Interesting.

Oh.my.gosh! Write a few (like 5) very elementary sentences on lang-8 and you get bombarded with corrections and friend requests! Yikes!

Seamoby Wrote:Oh.my.gosh! Write a few (like 5) very elementary sentences on lang-8 and you get bombarded with corrections and friend requests! Yikes!

That's how it is.

I wrote an entry where there was "メール" in the end of the name of the entry.
...meaning that it was a mail intended to be sent to someone to ask that person if she wants to talk on skype together.

But still 1 random guy wanted to talk with me on skype, and on person said sorry, I don't have skype, but I hope you'll find someone interesting to talk to.

I have 2 skype partners from lang-8. I do chat with them but not that frequently. What I can say is that I learned more from a single skype session than all my lang-8 posts combined (which is about 10)

At first I was speaking japanese like tarzan would. But after a few sessions, I managed to pick up bits and pieces of how a real japanese would phrase certain expressions, most of which aren't taught in textbooks

I've Skyped a couple times, but since I've shifted my focus to understanding to prepare for JLPT, I haven't done so recently.

A couple things:
-It's best if you understand each other's level and you know what you're actually practicing for in a conversation. When I first tried there were lots of strange silences because we would often get lost trying to understand each other in both languages, as we didn't have a good feel for each other's language ability. On the other hand, when I speak with my community college professor in Japanese, she can recognize where I struggle and helps me along easily, probably because it's her job and she's seen it a lot.
-So on that note, prepare conversation topics in advance and make sure you have a few things to talk about to avoid those awkward silences. In English or in Japanese, whichever you want.
-I'll just say that... meeting people in real life has been quite interesting, as I did on my trip to Japan last year. =) One guy in particularly seemed nice but his journal entries started becoming really creepy towards me so I blocked him -_-;

Seamoby Wrote:BTW, I've been reading some more lang-8 entries, and I noticed that it is not unusual for members to treat their journals like "real" journals. I've read entries where people pour their hearts out, so it seems that the language learning part is not always the main focus of some members. (I can't see myself correcting entries like those.) Interesting.

I often make emotionally driven posts of my life, as well as the general descriptive posts of American culture and how it differs from Japanese culture, as well as those "throwaway" kind of posts which talk about how I went to the store and bought soy sauce or something.
They're all pretty important when it comes to written communication. Certain sentence structures are used to sound more formal, certain structures are used to sound more emotive, so it's good practice all around. Writing about something is completely different from writing to someone.

Seamoby Wrote:Oh.my.gosh! Write a few (like 5) very elementary sentences on lang-8 and you get bombarded with corrections and friend requests! Yikes!

There are a ton of people who want to learn English, and it's not Japanese people, so they have to compete hard. There are a LOT of uncorrected English entries.
I still get a lot of friend requests despite setting my journal to friends-only, and it happens every time I post a new entry for some reason.

Man, lang-8 is slower than molasses. Those guys need to upgrade. It's choc-full of ads, too. Too bad about the technical issues because I like the site.

That's all. I just needed to vent.

It's been awkard for a while several "emergency" maintaince take downs later they go down for a three hour maintainence that has grew to six hours, wonder what is going on.

eggcluck Wrote:It's been awkard for a while several "emergency" maintaince take downs later they go down for a three hour maintainence that has grew to six hours, wonder what is going on.

Their site now says that they are now under "long maintenance" and that they will be back in 24 hours. Oh boy.

They're back up! And the site seems snappier. They seem to have ditched the flashy ads and switched to Google ads. Let's see how long this will last.

No, it's still slow. Forget what I said.

Have they been always THAT SLOW?!? I discovered that page just a few days ago and I was wondering why such a good page is so unreliable in a way.. takes hours to load a page or am I an exception (with Seamoby)??

It's just the past couple days in particular, I'd like to know wtf is going on, it's never been this bad! :p

Everyone is going nuts, lang-8 keeps apologizing LOL

The site response has definitely deteriorated recently. The staff said so themselves in their post, and people are writing about it in their journals. I've recently lost corrections that I typed out because the site would just hang when I submit the post or preview button. They obviously cannot continue this way, with the site being as unreliable as it is now. I hope they fix it because I'd like to continue using it.

Seamoby Wrote:I've recently lost corrections that I typed out because the site would just hang when I submit the post or preview button.

Same here, unfortunately