Lang-8 – The Polyglotist

Review

Lang-8 is a social networking site slash blog hosting service, but it is one in which you’re warranteed to have readers, and possibly the kind of reader you’ll like the most: natives of your chosen language! In Lang-8, your readers will correct your entries written in the language you’re learning in exchange for you correcting theirs. The way in which they stimulate mutual corrections is via a point system, which push your account up in several rankings (such as “most corrections”, “most popular member”, etc). It’s actually pretty competitive in there!

Lang-8’s free and paid services do not differ too much–a premium suscription shows your posts to native speakers as a priority above enables you to download your corrected entries to PDF, allows you to customize your page and URL, remove ads, upload pictures to your posts, among other options. Other than the possibility to check your corrections offline via PDF, the free service is quite respectable.

Lang-8 has grown astronomically since its inception, which is surprising because it is still maintained by a minuscule Tokyo-based team, including its founder, YangYang Xi, whose own blog posts announce changes to the site… before being corrected by the whole community.

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