For context, English is my native language and I’m currently actively learning Japanese. If anyone reads this and has any suggestions to fix my dilemma, feel free to suggest them 🙂
I’ve been learning Japanese on and off for several years but only started properly getting to grips with it since the beginning of Lockdown in 2020. My learning is all self studying with no formal tutoring due to finances and being unable to afford to pay for an official course or a regular tutor and I’m also living pretty far away from anywhere with any native Japanese people so keeping this in mind, perhaps lack of interaction with native speakers and lack of formal instruction is my issue. There are no language exchange clubs nearby and online I’ve yet to find a language exchange partner who I can contact and try to strike up a conversation with (the sites I’ve tried are either all paid for in order to send out initial invites or the people on them never get back to me, or maybe I’m just boring and no one wants to talk to me 😂).
I can read Japanese at an almost N4 level, understanding most of what I read (at that level or the grammar for that level if I’m reading stuff above that level) and being able to get the gist of podcasts and easy news without translating, can understand short conversations heard even when spoken at a natural level, though my speaking is slow (understandable with little opportunity to speak in Japanese) and my writing is still basic because even on here, I don’t expect others to correct me or read my short, disjointed posts in Japanese and I’ve been unable to get a tutor to help me correct my writing skills, though I am greatful when people do take the time to read over and correct my Japanese posts.
I know practice is required in order to improve but I’m struggling to figure out how to practice writing properly without expecting others to correct me and without writing the same stuff on a daily basis (I’ve tried the diary method, most entries are the same; what day/ date it is, what the weather is like, what I ate for meals and what times I studied or did whatever during the day). I’m not at the stage where I feel I could write a short story that would remotely make any sense and I’m unsure how to express my feelings about something I’ve read or watched so think I would struggle to make sense if I choose to write like that as well as being unable to explain what I’ve read or watched though I am trying this time for the multilingual book club to explain stuff while probably making little to no sense.
I can’t figure out how to improve where I am in writing without getting a tutor but also can’t afford to use a tutor regularly or take a course so I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place feeling like my reading and listening is improving so much more while my speaking and writing are falling behind.
I’m unable to decide if I should be reviewing stuff I know inside and out now so that I can improve my writing and speaking to bring them to a similar level as my reading and listening skills or if I should be cracking on with learning new things so that I can continue to improve my reading and listening skills knowing that my speaking and writing skills are falling way behind.
That’s my current thoughts on my progress and thank you to anyone who chose to read through this. Good luck with your own language learning journey 🙂
Hi there. I don't speak nor learn Japanese, but my advise is valid no matter what language you're learning: Well, I do think you should definitely expect (count on) your Japanese texts being corrected. I mean, that's the main purpose of Journaly, isn't it? As long as your texts are not deadly boring (and I'm assuming they aren't) and you don't insult anyone or so, then there is absolutely no reason for not receiving helpful comments. My experience in almost one year of using Journaly is very positive in that aspect: I've seen most texts being corrected. I don't know how active the Japanese-community is, but in all languages I'm fluent in, the response and activity has been so far really high and qualitative. I think your "problem" is simply the lack of writing practice. In short: Just write about no matter what interests you or keeps you busy. And if you worry about stuff like this, then try to write a short and easy version of it in Japanese. There is absolutely nothing wrong in writing short and easy texts (even full of mistakes). You need to start somewhere and embrace the fact that you will make lots of mistakes. But see them as a learning mechanism/chance instead as a discouragement. Another way to motivate Japanese speakers to correct your texts and give you constructive feedback is simply to help them back with your mothertongue. The giving and taking works really well.
Actually, Eduard, there are languages where you have to wait quite a while to get some feedback or don't get any at all. From my experience in a couple of not so popular languages - in Turkish I almost always get feedback within two or three days (what's super cool and I'd like to thank Batu for that 😊), whereas in Czech it used to take a week or longer and it was often similar in Japanese when I used to write in it, so I think it can be discouraging, especially for beginners who really hope for some corrections. However, I like the idea of giving and taking, I think it actually can help a bit 🙂
I guess it depends on what your goals are, what you want to do with the language and within what time frame, but I personally would not be attempting to speak or write at all at the N4 level. Instead, I would focus on getting as much input as possible, through reading, watching videos, listening to podcasts, etc. Only after I understand the language quite well will I start trying to produce it myself. For more tips on how to follow this approach specifically when learning Japanese, check out the YouTube channel "Matt vs. Japan" and his website Refold: https://refold.la/. Even once I do start producing output in a language, my speaking and writing skills are ALWAYS behind my reading and listening skills. This is totally normal. Your passive vocabulary (words you understand) will always be much larger than your active vocabulary (words you can produce), even in your native language. So don't stress about it. :-)
Hello! I am also struggling to output in Chinese. My speaking skill is way behind my reading skill. I agree with Wendy, passive vocabulary is larger than active vocabulary. We can move passive vocabulary words into active vocabulary by practicing, actually using them. By the way, I think I can help you correct your journal :)
There are several of my post that have no corrections or comments on them at all and although one of the purposes of Journaly is to get corrections, there is nothing forcing anyone to correct anyone else’s post. I do correct posts in English (because it’s the only language I know fluently) most times that I post I’ll pick 2 or 3 posts in english and correct those as well and will try to read one or two posts in Japanese as well though I won’t correct those since I don’t have enough experience with the language. I’m familiar with Matt vrs Japan, and several other YouTubers who are Japanese language learners or polyglots and have picked up a lot of tips on language learning. Since my goal is to be as fluent as possible and that using Japanese as much as possible is a massive boost to my learning, I want to use output for the things I am learning as much as I can with what I know but not knowing if it is correct or not doesn’t help with becoming fluent in the long run. Since my posts aren’t always corrected, I’ve taken to using Journaly to write short posts when I can and continuing to write diary entries every so often but only for my own output which I’ll come back to further down the line and re-read in order to pick up my own mistakes. I’m using an AJATT style approach when learning because switch back and forth between English and Japanese was causing me issues. As for Journaly always being positive, mostly yes it is. The community on here is a good one but even within it I’ve had at least one if not two people who have decided to take a swing at me for a post even though all the post was doing was similar to this one, expressing my own thoughts on my own progress and learning style.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to read over this and thank you for the motivational comments and suggestions. I’ll take those on board and see where I end up 🙂
For me, the purpose of Journaly is practise my writing. If I get corrections, that's even better. I have also written some posts were I didn't get any corrections. However, I still got the advantages of using the language: practising vocabulary and using grammar structures I've studied. Keep on reading and listening, write about what you've heard or listened to. You will get better, even without corrections. Robin has a few videos on this topic, on how to practise speaking on you own and developing fluency and how to avoid making mistakes while practising by yourself. Don't rely so much on other people, make the best out of the resources available to you.
I'm very well aware that not every post immediately gets corrected, and some of them even stay quite long uncommented. That happens for absolutely popular languages like Spanish and German as well, and with Italian I've even read somewhere people clearly complaining about the "absence of Italians" on Journaly. I personally find this amount of complaining and lamenting simply pointless (and I don't necessarily refer to this post and the comments, but more in general terms). I mean, let's please not forget that Journaly is still a relatively new and unknown web application and that everyone here participates on a voluntary basis and doesn't get paid for it. I see it from a much more positive side, one that takes the starting point of "actually why should any of this be available or even exist?" (it certainly didn't, say, 2 years ago): Alone the fact that Journaly is available for free is simply astonishing, people. Besides that, it's amazing how much feedback a lot of users are willing to give, often in a very long-term manner (daily reading posts and commenting/correcting them). This amount of engagement, no matter in what language, is still absolutely striking to me (I have mostly German, English and Spanish in mind). At the same time, my mother tongue (Catalan) has until now about 22 written posts (so very few), but Montse and I - essentially just two people - do our best to correct them as fast and well as we can. So it all depends, obviously, on the size of both parties involved. To me, this is obvious, but I have the feeling that a lot of people just expect their posts to be magically corrected, without really understanding where that comes from and the amount of work involved. As Caro says, it's important to concentrante on the writing process in itself. I'm aware I'm not saying anything new in this comment, but so be it. One last comment: In my personal experience, the feedback that I got until now in my German texts is much better than the corrections I got years ago in a German course (and I absolutely loved my teacher). Journaly is, at its best, a really helpful, welcoming, and self-motivating place. I really hope it stays like that as it grows in number of users, texts and corrections. I experience/notice the "waiting process" on my own, in languages like Dutch or Norwegian, which are clearly underrepresented as well, but I try my best to be patient. Ideally, everyone can help in getting other people to know the platform.