Alternative platforms

[Mount Everest]

1. As of 2019, what are some alternatives to Lang-8 and Italki for improving my writing skills?

I have checked Italki, but I think the old Lang-8 was still way better for most of my target languages. I have received valuable feedback from some random users, some of whom, I have exchanged languages and ideas with. I have received not only positive feedback, but they kindly have provided me links etc when needed. I'm not sure if I had luck there, though.

Italki, on the other hand, it seems that most people will not correct your notes, even for FIGS because there are so many people posting there. None of the notes I wrote in other less popular languages were corrected so far. I wonder if it is worth taking my time writing notes in Thai, Swahili, Hindi or Urdu, Finnish, Estonian, Mongolian, just to mention some of them. I'd understand if I were at lower levels such as A1 or A2, which native speakers would most likely avoid to correct.

Italki has the problem about the length. You can't write a long text, because native speakers will not correct them. On Lang-8, I used to cut into parts and different people were correcting different parts of them.

2. Any advice on how I can improve my writing skills? I guess, the only alternative I have now is to keep reading, reading and reading native resources, both formal and informal, trying to cover fiction books to non-fiction books, formally written newspapers (editorials, columns etc) to tabloids, twitter etc. Then, I have been proofreading what I write, but this is a very limited way. There is no doubt that reading has been helping me to get an insight on different styles. However, proofreading alone will not push me to say C2 in writing skills in my target languages.

[NoManches]

Great question and I was actually wondering the same thing.

I used to use lang-8 but found it (somewhat) annoying because I would have multiple people give me different corrections that were all different. In other words, one person would mark one of my sentences correct while the other would mark it wrong. I soon realized that it just came down to a matter of what sounded better to the native speaker who was reading my work. A Spaniard would mark me wrong for saying "manejar" instead of "conducir" or would change a verb I put in the preterite to be in the present perfect, to give a few other examples. Of course there were plenty of other times when everybody would mark something wrong because I suck at writing. But even then, it can be annoying to not know why you wrote something wrong.

I also found that one some days I'd receive a bunch of corrections, and other times I wouldn't receive many at all.


I have two tutors I work with who are always willing to go over my writing, but to be honest, I prefer you have them speak with me and challengemy speaking skills. It's not fun using most of my 1 hour block to talk about grammar mistakes...I'd much rather have a dedicated writing tutot do that for me.


If only there was a platform like lang-8 that had a bunch of native speakers who were guaranteed to correct your writing...with no need for you to correct theirs. Obviously this would be a paid for platform but I would be more than willing to pay for something like this.

[rdearman]

People do corrections here:

https://www.language-exchanges.org