Hi guys,

Slight change of plans. Instead of writing about recommendations for Journaly’s site UX (User Experience), I decided to focus on something more subtle. This post is about recommendations for issues with Journaly that can't be addressed simply by changing the layout of the website. They depend on the user, the human factor. Just as "you can’t legislate morality,” as the saying goes, you can’t fix human interactions with website design.

Today we’ll be talking about giving relevant comments and the type of feedback that’s most useful.

Relevant Comments

I've noticed a certain trend on Journaly. We're all diligent about giving corrections, but sometimes we neglect to discuss the actual subject of the post. Imagine this: you just published a post about an exciting trip you recently took. You can't wait to see what others will say about your trip, about trips they've taken, etc. But the only comments you receive are things like, "Your [x language] has gotten so much smoother!" or, "You might want to try this sentence structure instead." Cocopop complains about how people tend to write dull, factual, encyclopedic-like posts instead of vibrant ones about the joy of life and whatnot. But people might be sticking to the “boring” topics because no one takes the time to respond to posts about the cool stuff.

I can't decide which is worse:

1. when you try to practice your target language with people, but they switch to English or another lingua franca; or
2. when you try to communicate something meaningful in your target language, but the response has nothing to do with what you said.

What's the point of learning a language if not to communicate? No one's asking you to spill your guts(give large quantities of personal information) about the topic; just a quick mention of way that you can relate to the post will do(suffice). Even though posts might seem like the most important part of Journaly, the comments are the real lifeblood.

Evaluative Feedback

I think many of us language learners have become disillusioned with language proficiency scales. They just don't capture the level that someone is at. I dread filling out forms that ask you to rate your level of speaking, writing, reading, and listening to a language. I can do all four decently in isolation. But, as I've mentioned before, when I'm taking notes (listening and writing) or conversing (listening and speaking), my level plummets.

This might be a controversial take(perspective), but I think that for those of us who haven't reached an advanced level in a language, or are reaching it for the first tome, we have no idea how we're doing. We feel hyped one day and bewildered the next. We're at the mercy of the feedback of others, which itself can be inconsistent. (For a non-native, my Spanish is “good.” If I were a heritage speaker, people would hold me to a different standard and call my Spanish “decent.”)

I've realized recently that not everything is the gross sum of its parts. The number of errors in a post does not determine its quality or the language level of the person who wrote it. However, that's the main metric that Journaly tracks. A while ago, I wrote a post in Spanish about the intermediate plateau. I got 100 comments on it. Lemme just say, I was not feeling so hot right then. (I’ll briefly mention — with a slight connotation of sass — that I was feeling down on myself at that moment.) One comment in particular turned my mood around. It went something like this: “This was a really good post. You used formal language to express complex ideas but managed to do it in a simple way. Thank you for encouraging me to keep pushing through the intermediate phase.” This was the most valuable comment I received because of its specificity. It told me what I had done well despite my mistakes.

I hope that we can all remember to give this kind of feedback more often. (I say all of us because I forget to do this too.) Clap for posts, tell people they’re improving, tell people that their mistakes are an indication of their high level and not a negation of it. At the end of the day, we’re all confused to some degree. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be here on Journaly asking for feedback. So let’s try to clear things up for each other as much as we can.