Might sound silly to be asking so long after starting to study Japanese but how does someone implement the grammar they’ve learned when self studying without having a teacher/tutor or friend willing to mark it correct or incorrect? How do you know if it’s right and how do you fix mistakes or even figure out if you’re making mistakes?
This is my main bug bear while self studying. I don’t know of any way to get things corrected consistently without having someone else there to do so.
I know there are sites you can post and ask or you can join a paid subscription to have someone check your work or you can get a tutor, but what if you can’t afford that or can’t get consistent corrections? What do people do to compensate and still improve their writing?
Writing and speaking are the two things I struggle with most and I just don’t know a way to improve those without outside input so was curious to see if anyone has any suggestions that have worked.
Have you tried ChatGPT? You can ask it to correct a text. Works fairly well. Don’t know how it does with advanced grammar, but the simple stuff I just tried worked.
Honestly, other than AI, you really kinda need a person or at the very least a workbook with solutions, if you want correction. Though the latter won’t be able to explain why your version is wrong or if your version might be another way to say something.
However, personally, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary for improvement. For me, output simply lags behind input. While my understanding is probably N2, my output is more along the lines of N4. When I learn a new concept, it takes a long time and many encounters to actually become part of my active repertoire. I know how to use it, but it simply does not come to mind when I actively use the language.
If you want to join another forum. I understand it’s also on Bunpro’s forums too. The corrections aren’t consistent either.
Like you alluded to, there’s apps like HelloTalk and Tandem or getting a tutor if you spend money.
Other than that, I really recommend just putting in the practice. I started a Japanese diary for output practice. It hasn’t made a big impact on my grammar, but it has helped my physical writing. I also made sure to get a 3 year one so that every year I can look back on what I did the year or two before.
Also if you set something like google docs to Japanese, it will make the same kind of grammar corrections it would for English. It’s good at catching my typos at least.
With ai chatbots, I would caution you just because they’re not the best. Better than no one sure, but they give bs reasons pretty often and are terrible at counting.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Finances are a struggle though for spending on hobbies atm and although I may be able to scrape enough up for during the warmer months, once winter hits, that extra cash is going to have to go on bills so it would mean stopping with a tutor for at least 4-6 months of the year depending on how long it takes to get bills/debt accrued, back under control once winter subsides. I’ve considered a second job to fund hobbies but then I’d have even less time than I do now.
Would have thought they’d be better at counting than a human but yeah, I’ve heard they’re not great.
Not sure if I can use that on my devices, at least I’ve not ever found it on any of them. I use Google translate and DeepL for translations but even those are sometimes off.
I didn’t know about stuff like this. Might be good for smaller groups of sentences, thanks
I have tried this but mostly I was just recycling the same things over and over again (what day/ date/ month, what times I ate/ studied/ worked, and what the weather was like/ how I felt; My life is pretty boring )
I tried writing prompts but those didn’t really work because I didn’t know enough to write about and didn’t know the right grammar and vocabulary and couldn’t get it checked consistently.
I would be careful with this site for more complicated stuff, though. I tested it with some sentence from a light novel and it complained about 6 alleged errors, probably just grammar or expressions it doesn’t know.
That could be due to writers breaking grammar rules though (as they tend to do). I wonder how well it works for everyday writing or non fiction stuff though.
I just tried it in a few sentences from the start of a bit of Soseki’s non-fiction essay about the Tower of London. It is super-aggressive about wanting to insert commas (not in wrong places, but they’re hardly obligatory), and it didn’t like やめにした. I tried it on a few lines from the start of a random Asahi Shimbun article and it wanted some changes I would describe as ‘stylistic’ rather than grammar (like 電撃訪問 to 突然の訪問, and のか to のでしょうか even though none of the text was in desu-masu style).
I didn’t see any suggestions that would result in outright ungrammatical/wrong text, but it does seem happy to “correct” text that was already perfectly fine.
Notice that although it says “changed the verb tense of the first sentence from present to past to match the tense of the second sentence”, (1) that’s not the change it made and (2) the second sentence isn’t past tense so its rationale is also nonsense…
true. it’s, of course, not perfect. But if the alternative is nothing, I think it does a fairly decent job. It does require you to have at least some basic knowledge about Japanese to evaluate the answers but it did catch all my changes (I think).
Pretty much every transcript I’ve seen somebody post on this forum or the wanikani one has had at least one flub in it. If you know enough to evaluate what it’s suggesting then that’s one thing, but I think that requires a fairly high level of Japanese to start with. Learning tools you can’t trust are of pretty limited utility IMHO.
You can change individual Google docs to various languages under the file menu
Ah, I’m a creature of always trying to find new experiences. If you want more variety in your life, you could try to do one new thing a week (restaurant, day trip, walk, etc)? But maybe I’m overstepping with that.
What kind of prompts did you try? The ones on Renshuu.org aren’t daily, but there are so many at this point, it’d be hard to run out. They’re pretty simple and open ended, so it’s up to you for how complexly you want to answer them. You can also reply back to other users and I’ve had some good experiences chatting with similar or higher level people.
When I’m trying to write (very infrequent), I look up things on ReversoContext or in Weblio app. You can look at multiple example sentences in both. In ReversoContext, I’m usually searching in English; Weblio Japanese
What I meant was that I didn’t even know it was available on my devices (I’ve only ever used word and excel before at work). Will see if I can download it.
I work 4 days away from home then work as a carer the other three so it’s difficult for me to get out and about to experience new things. Usually time off is spent studying or playing games/reading books due to that mostly being free activities. Also have long travel commutes driving. I live in the country so the nearest things are a tattoo studio and a woodland walk meaning it can get quite expensive to go out anywhere.
I love experiencing new things but atm with the rising prices and current financial climate in the UK, it’s very difficult for me to go to new places which is why mostly I was recycling the same stuff over and over.
I tried a website with a thousand prompts in Japanese and was working my way through them, I also tried a few from みんなの日本語 writing book and was posting them on a journaling site as well as writing them in a diary but lack of feedback meant I didn’t know if I was doing it right or not. I have tried a few on Renshuu but haven’t been on it recently, again due to the feedback thing. Should probably try that again.
I’ve not used this before. Do you find that it’s quite consistently correct in grammar context or have you ever found any inconsistencies with it?
It’s pulling sentences from a variety of sources (or multiple databases perhaps), so it would depend on any individual sentence. You can view the source for any individual sentence on the app & website versions.
Honestly, I’m not skilled enough with grammar to offer a useful impression. The only things I can say I’ve observed is that you’ll find multiple ways to say the same thing, and occasionally you’ll get a sentence or two that isn’t actually relevant, but that’s pretty easy to figure out and just skip. (it’s sorta similar to what happens when you have a long sentence in an anime & the Eng subs show the 2nd clause while the 1st clause is being spoken)
This discord has a channel (and role) specifically for people who are looking for corrections on their JP: English-Japanese Language Exchange . It’s the official discord of /r/learnJapanese (where you can also post things in the Daily Thread), but much more chill than the subreddit afaict (I’ve only been in it for like a week or so)
