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About Me
● @hajikami
● Programmer in Japan
● Native Japanese speaker
● Learning English
– Around A2 – B1 in CEFR
● Trying French
– Around A1 in CEFR
● Lang-8 user
– Not a member of staff
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About This Document
In this document,
I share my experience which I got
whilst I've been using Lang-8 everyday
for 4 months
with you.
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Be Careful, Please
What I share in this document
is
my experience which I get.
I'm not responsible
for your experience which you get.
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What You Will Get From This Doc
● About a language exchange
● What is a language exchange?
● What should we be careful of a language
exchange?
● About Lang-8
● What is Lang-8?
● What should we be careful of Lang-8?
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What Is a Language Exchange?
● To teach our native languages each other
● A Japanese person
teaches a French person Japanese
● The French person
teaches the Japanese person French
● The first person
may teach Japanese in English
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Ex: Who Learns Japanese?
● Those who love Japanese subculture
● Traditions: shrine, temple, dyeing, and so on
● Subcultures: manga, J-pops, and so on
● Those who love Japanese language
● Japanese is isolated
● Sadly, the people are much less than those who
learn English, as you know
● I'm extremely delighted with that there are many people
who want to learn our language which is used in the east-
side of Asia! :)
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What Should We Be Careful Of a
Language Exchange?
● Those who teach you are NOT professional
● Perhaps, difficult to understand
● Perhaps, containing some mistake
● Perhaps, with grammar points you don't know
● We should be careful vice versa
● Easy explanations
● Correct explanations
● Using grammar points the user probably know
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What Is Lang-8?
● SNS where those who want to exchange their
language gather
● Users write entries
– The other users correct them
● Not a course
– You NEVER learn foreign languages to use only lang-8
● Complementary (Freemium)
● Enable to start only with your other SNS account
– With your twitter account
– With your facebook account
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What Is Lang-8?
● It's lovely to correct anyone's entries!
● You, who is a Spanish learner, correct
an entry in English
● But the person who write the entry is Chinese
● You don't get corrections from the person,
however, the person might correct entries
which the other people write!
● You might get corrections easily!
● Lang-8 provides us with that system
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Actually, do we get corrections?
● Yes, though depending on the language
(Following items are in case in English)
● One correction at least in 24 hours
– I often write at night and read corrections in the morning
● I recommend entries of between 3 and 15 lines
– Too long entries are not easy to read and to correct
– Too short entries are too difficult to see what it means
● We tend to get good corrections
when writing just a little bit difficult entry
– It contains some mistakes
but what we mean is clear for the correctors
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What about the other languages?
● French (which I'm learning)
● Several corrections in 24 hours
● Italian (which I've written a bit)
● A bit more corrections than French
● Welsh (which I want to learn and learnt a bit)
● Several corrections, but it takes much more time
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Correction Examples (In English)
I'm loving this game!
↓
I love this game!
I will eat food my frends today night!
↓
I will have dinner with my friends this evening!
[“have dinner” is more natural.]
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Some Choices
I practised the violin at the university today.
↓
1. I practised the violin at the university today.
2. I practiced the violin at the university today.
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Is the language only one?
● As you know, English has some local dialects
● UK, US, Canada, Australia, S. Africa ... too many!
● French does also
● France, Belgium, Switzerland, Morocco, ...
● The language which you want to learn might be
several local dialects
● They correct our entries with “their native” language
● They might have some differences of grammar points,
vocabulary, and so on
● You don't have to be careful if you are a beginner
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Other Features In Lang-8
● “With native lang”
● You can write an entry with you native language
● “L points”
● The more score you have, the more easily you get corrections
● You can get the point when you correct entries
● “Premium”
● Around 7 US dollars per month
● You can get corrections easily, according to the staff
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To Write Foreign Language Everyday
● Of course, it's really difficult
● Much easier to write our native language!
● Themes to write are running out day by day as well
● Newcomers often disappear in a week...
● We don't have to write difficult stuff
● We have to write entries which we can write
● No problem that the entries contains many mistakes!
● We MUST NOT write many entries in a day
● It makes us exhausted, and we won't use it any more...
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You Don't Know Words, Do You?
● Just a kidding!
● I wrote easy entries
when I knew only 400 French words or less
– They look childish :P
– Some of us in our country say “I can't use English!”
even though the people,
who graduated from high-school,
probably know around 3000 words or more
and grammar points like the past perfect tense!
● Don't hesitate to use your knowledge!
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The Entry At That Time
Je suis en congé demain.
(I'm on holiday tomorrow.)
Amis vont partir aux Phillippines, nous allons les voir donc.
(My friends are going to leave for the Phillippines, so we will see
them.)
Bons voyages!
(Have good trips!)
# I notice some mistakes easily now...
# amis → des amis, the place of “donc”, and so on...
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Anyway, Easily!
● Shall we write with easy sentences?
● With the subject of human and easy words
– My wallet has been stolen!
→ Somebody got my money!
● Only some tenses, for example,
which are just present, past and future
● Only with words which we know as long as we can
– If we have no idea, we use some dictionaries
● With typical phrases which we can use easily
– For example, “Me gusta ...” in Spanish
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As a Place To Write
● Having an opportunity to write foreign language
● To write foreign language gives us a great experience.
● We can communicate
with the other users via our entries!
● Telling about “our culture” via SNS
● The most popular theme is our culture!
– For example, holidays, festivals, and so on.
● It's quite difficult to tell about our culture with our words
– “We have the word 'memento mori' and it means...”
– “I love 'Sunday Roast', which is ...”
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As a Place To Read
● There are people
who write “with native lang” which is we learn
● They write easy entries in their native language
because the entries are what they can write in foreign
language
● Their entries are more natural than us, of course
● If you get friends
who speak the language which you learn...
● You understand a content of the entry from “with native
lang”, and it's a great chance to read native sentence!
● They encourage you!
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As a Place To Review Our Language
● We don't know our native language so much
● There are many words
which are listed on dictionaries but we hardly use
● There might be a grammar as a foreign language
– There is Japanese grammar as a foreign language
● We create sentences with our words
● Considering an appreciate sentence
– Sometimes we should correct a sentence at all
because it is grammatically correct but not fluent
● Doing conversations with what we know each other
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At Last
● It's really enjoyable to exchange our language
● Enjoying foreign languages
● We should know bad points of the language
exchange
● Don't forget to grow our native language up
● Easily, anyway!
● We do use easy sentences many many times!
● Don't hesitate to make mistakes!
