Written language exchange

In last issue’s article, I looked at conversational language exchange. Another way to exchange language is through writing. Writing is a great way to improve both accuracy and vocabulary as, unlike speaking, it offers you the luxury of being able to look up words and grammar structures as well as the opportunity to review what you’ve written. Traditionally, language students have practiced writing by exchanging letters with pen pals. The Internet has now made it a lot easier to find people to write to and has opened up other options.

The simplest way to do written language exchange is to find someone to exchange emails with. This is probably also the best way to get language and cultural feedback on sermon manuscripts. For a simple language exchange you could write to someone you already know or find someone through online language-exchange websites (try searching for “language exchange partners”).

To get the most out of language exchange, it’s best to incorporate some kind of feedback mechanism. For example, when replying to an email you could point out three or four mistakes in your partner’s email. Alternatively, by attaching messages as Word documents, you could use the “Track Changes” function to show revisions. This is a particularly helpful way to get language and cultural feedback on a sermon manuscript.

However, my favourite way of doing written language exchange is through the blogging site Lang-8 (lang-8.com). When you write a blog post in Japanese, native speakers will correct it and comment on it. You can get nearly instant feedback on blog posts by multiple Japanese speakers, which is highly motivating. It can also be quite addictive!

To get the most from the site, I advise keeping blog posts short and interesting. It’s a good idea not to post entries straight after writing them but to review them several times for any careless slips (you might even consider reviewing the next day). It’s surprising how many times I’ve seen a correction and thought “Ah, I already knew that!” Also, the more corrections you give others, the more corrections you’re likely to receive (the site uses a point system to gauge how many corrections you’ve made.)

Lang-8 is free to use but offers a paid premium service, which, for US$7 per month (or US$63 per year), gives you benefits such as no ads, the ability to create PDFs of corrected entries, greater prominence on the site, and the ability to post photos with entries.

It can be a good place to explore cultural issues. For example, I wrote a post praising Prime Minister Abe because he always seems to be accompanied by his wife on overseas trips and they hold hands when disembarking from their plane. I naively thought he was a great role model, as not many Japanese business people travel with their spouses on business trips and they rarely involve their families with their jobs. However, I was promptly informed that it’s basically a show put on for foreigners; he’d never do the same thing in Japan. It was also pointed out to me that all previous prime ministers had done the same (one widowed prime minister even took his daughter instead). I’d been well and truly duped!

Whichever way you choose, I’d encourage you to give written language exchange a go. It can be a lot of fun and provides another way to improve your language skills while making friends and learning about Japanese culture.