Practice writing, make friends. Lang-8 is da bomb.

While I usually cringe a little at websites that advertise themselves with banners that say things like “LEARN A LANGUAGE! FREE!”, since usually they’re a Rosetta Stone-esque gimmicky kind of site that ends up teaching you how to say such crucial phrases as “THE PURPLE ELEPHANT IS SLEEPING UNDER THE TABLE” and not much else…there is one website that I find to be pre-tty dang cool, and that is Lang-8.

Lang-8 is a social networking/journaling service that lets you write journal entries in the language you’re trying to learn, so that native speakers of the language will read the journal and correct your mistakes, and give you on advice on how to express yourself more naturally.  I’ve never tried it with European languages, but for Asian languages….this is THE PLACE to get real help with the language you’re learning.  There are tons of users from Asian countries, all of them eager to learn English themselves!  I think the site is Chinese originally, but I’m not completely sure.  Either way, any aspiring Asiaglots should definitely check this place out.

While we can all gain a lot from listening to audio, reading books, and reviewing flashcards, I believe that you can’t actually get better at using your target language without, well, using it.  Write about whatever topic you want; this ain’t no class essay assignment, girl.  Here’s your chance to finally write about how many badass shiny Pokemon you’ve collected, and (hopefully) find someone who cares.  (Which reminds me…..Pokemon games are amazing language-learning tools and I should definitely write a post about that later.)

I think it’s all pretty fantastic because while posting Facebook or Twitter posts in Japanese may be fun practice too, most people will always be too polite to correct you on your mistakes.  An arrogant douchebag is the LAST thing you want to be in many Asian cultures, after all!  So that’s why Lang-8 is good; the PURPOSE of the site is to correct people, so people will tell it like it is.  Many of them comment on what you actually were talking about in your journal too though, so you have a chance to actually connect with people beyond just revising each other’s stuff.

You might think that it would end up being the kind of thing where you post an entry but nobody responds to it….but it’s not.  Every time I’ve posted a Lang-8 entry, whether in Japanese or Vietnamese, I receive plenty of corrections and nice comments within a matter of hours!  (And hey, it’s not like I totally exploited this for school presentations and essays or anything! That was most definitely not a thing!)

Of course since you’re asking for corrections, you should also sometimes go around and be nice and help out the folks who are trying to learn English.  This doesn’t have to be a boring task; you can seek out entries from English learners who are native speakers of your target language, and then help them out IN your target language, for even more practice! See my correction below:

See? Okay actually now I just realized that I kinda made a mistake in my correction but WHATEVERR the point here is that I’m helping a sista out, all while practicing my Japanese.

Another cool thing is that Lang-8 doesn’t have to be all about just writing.  I get SO MANY friend requests from users who say they want to Skype and teach me Japanese/Vietnamese! So there’s your speaking practice right there. Lang-8 and Skype are both powerful language-learning tools that can go hand in hand.

Go make an account.  Post something.  Try it out.  If you really wanna say THE PURPLE ELEPHANT IS SLEEPING UNDER THE TABLE, you’re free to do that too.  The possibilidads are endless.