It's been a while I haven't written in English. In fact it was on February 14th, when I ended my series on my interests. You can get back to those posts by clicking on the ᐊ arrow at the top of this page.
I'm now taking the opportunity of this 100th post to write in English again, and to review the three months of my Journaly experience. I have been writing in seven languages in order to document my progress (or standstill?) in the languages I am learning, to summarize the books I am reading for further reference and of course, to get feedback from native speakers in order to improve my writing skills.
English
Without a doubt, this is the foreign language I know the best. I am using it on a daily basis for work and listen to some podcasts, not especially for learning the language, but because I am interested in them. Writing in English here on Journaly was never a big challenge, but I loved the feedback I was receiving, both in form of corrections as well as through comments. This was not only very helpful and motivating, but above all, it showed exactly how Journaly is supposed to work. However, I decided to discontinue my English posts for two reasons: first, I wanted to focus on a language I know less well—Italian—, and second, because I joined the Multilingual Book Club 01—I'm reading the book in Italian too. Since I was not able to write two posts a day in two different languages, I chose to sacrifice English for Italian.
Italian
Writing in Italian has sometimes been a challenge. On some days, I can write quite fluently and only need to look up a word or two. On some other days, writing even one single sentence is painful. It might be due to the fact that I usually write my posts shortly before midnight, and on some days, I'm more tired than on others. In terms of corrections and comments, I've seen everything from zero contribution to loads of corrections and interesting discussions in the comment section. Especially the ones about the book club attract people from other languages, who understand Italian (maybe with the help of Google Translate) and comment in another language. These discussions are very pleasant.
Romanian
After English, this is my second best foreign language. There are only a handful Romanian natives on Journaly though, so I'm happy enough that almost all my posts received corrections, some even short comments. However, this shows the limits of Journaly at this early stage: if there are not enough native speakers of one given language, the system doesn't work so well.
Czech and Korean
These are two languages I consider myself as being very poor in writing. While I'm getting my texts corrected in Czech, I'm surprised to see very little corrections and comments in Korean. This is very frustrating, but I'm continuing to write nevertheless, hoping that someone will stumble upon my Korean texts some day. Maybe it will be my "future me" coming back and wondering about the mistakes I was making "back then". Since Robin showed a video with his transcription practice, I decided to do that in Czech and find it surprisingly effective, especially because I'm actually getting corrections about words I didn't capture accurately.
Esperanto and Latin
These are two languages that have little to no native speakers on the world, let alone here on Journaly. These texts get rarely corrected or commented, but I'm fine with that. I think that the process of writing is valuable enough that, even if my errors don't get corrected, some point in time, I will be able to say that my perseverance was helpful.
Correcting and commenting posts in German and French, occasionally in English
Knowing how much I crave for corrections and comments, I try to give back to the community as much as possible by correcting at least one text a day, but mostly more than that. Sometimes I see newcomers, who just post one text and then disappear, sometimes I see regular posters and enjoy reading their posts as they progress and learn from their mistakes. This is so rewarding!
A few more words on Journaly
Every week around 200-300 posts are made on Journaly. As of lately, the numbers are slightly decreasing and more on the 200-ish side of the balance... This worries me a bit because I think that since the beginning of the year, more and more people have joined the platform so the numbers should rather increase. Since they don't, many people who joined must have stopped posting, or at least, are posting less often than at the beginning. That must be the well known problem related to the fate of the new year's resolutions... I for one am happy that I could stick to my habit of writing a post a day. See you on July 18 in my 200th post!
Hi Erich! That's awesome! I think this probably makes you the first one to reach the 100-posts-badge! Congrats! And thanks for writing in a language I don't need DeepL for :D As you might have noticed, I'm not really consistent in posting. This is now also visualized when you go on people's profiles. I really like that feature! I'm looking forward to all your future posts! :)
Wow, that is quite an accomplishment! So far I've just been writing in Galego (and occasionally in English for the book club), so I've experienced the same as you regarding not getting much engagement on posts in certain languages. In fact, as far as I can tell there are no native speakers of Galego on Journaly yet. But nevertheless, the platform has helped me develop a habit of writing in my target language, so that alone has made it worth it. And I've really enjoyed reading the comments I sometimes get from people who speak Spanish and/or Portuguese and are surprised to see how well they understand Galego. A few weeks ago, I decided to hire a native-speaking tutor on iTalki to correct my posts, and that has been going well.
Linda, almost, Michael33 was the first to reach 100 posts :) I like DeepL too, but I find myself using Google Translate more because it supports more languages... Wendy, that's a good idea to hire a tutor on iTalki for correcting you :)
I am impressed. What a list. You really using Journaly to its best.
Fantastic post detailing how you’re using the platform of Journaly for different languages. I myself joined back at the turn of the year but have usually only managed to post once or twice a week. When I first started posting I posted several posts within days of each other but worried I might be posting to often so cut it back. Your post has inspired me to try to post more often in my target language and to comment more on posts in my native language to help learners. Thank you for your inspiring post 🙂
Erich, first of all, congratulations on your perseverence and your wonderful posts. I'm always in awe of how many languages you're able to write in. I've been recovering from an ankle injury, so I've been a bit absent on Journaly. But thank God, I'm starting to feel better and am moving around, so I thought I'd check in and see what's what. I'm glad I did - I've always enjoyed your posts and know you appreciate the corrections. Great work!
Hello Erich, I come after everything but it's not a big deal, I'll still comment.
First of all, as always, I like reading your posts in English because the mistakes you made are often the same as mine, and because you write of course interesting things.
I didn't realised you wrote so much because most of your posts are not in a language I speak, so I just don't look at them. But wow! (it also means there was 100 days since the beginning of the year, time goes by so quickly....)
I have a English related question: Why can we say "I use it for work and listen [...] "? I though one says "for working and listening" or "to work and to listen" but apparently not...
Last but not least I understand your worries by looking at the numbers of posts. The feeling of something new at the beginning is probably responsible for the decreasing. Speaking personally I had really a lot to do the last two months (and my german lessons became less boring humhum) so I didn't write that much here. But I'll anyway continue to write (I hope more than now during the holidays) and to be good publicity for the website :) (even if my advertising didn't work that good with my friends so far ahah).
Do you know how many posts the platform needs to continue to "live" and have a dynamic enough?
Good luck for your "1-per-day" posts!
Hello Rachel, no problem for commenting "late", I happen to do the same thing from time to time... It's a good thing that we get these emails from Robin, otherwise it would be hard to spot the later interactions. It also showed me that I haven't corrected this text yet... Don't worry if you don't manage to post more often, I also enjoy a lot your content on YouTube and I know how time-consuming that is!
Yes, this emails are very useful! I didn't know you were watching my videos ^^' I'm glad you enjoyed it