I find writing a diary in my target lang or “TL” is very helpful so as an example I will write my over all mood of the day so far in Greek my “TL”
είμαι χαρούμενος
I am happy
and I will also write what I am doing and what I will be doing.
Γράφω ένα νέο νήμα και θα διαβάζω τον Χάρι Πότερ στα ελληνικά
I am writing a new thread and will be reading harry poter in greek
this helps me a lot, and I hope it helps you as well
αντίο
bye
Harry Potter ist meine neu Gott! 
Hopefully, it is a correct German sentence. How do you know that whatever you are writing is grammatically correct. And, that’s how local native speakers say things. Nonetheless, it is a good idea but I will wait when I really have developed an intuition for the language.
yes, I have a native speaker of greek on italki that helps me with learning greek, she checks if it is right and if it’s not she will give me the correct sentence
I’ve definitely wanted to do this more. Unfortunately I haven’t had much time to do it. One days worth =D
You can post it to the writing exchange here on LingQ and someone can correct you as needed. While not fullproof you could also type out the English (or whatever your native language may be) on deepL or google and see how they translate it. Not perfect, but may iron out the biggest flaws if you are using straightforward language without colloquialisms. Particularly with deepL.
Also…kids and adults make mistakes all the time when learning a language, so to some degree who cares if you’re wrong? People worry about ingraining bad habits I think, but despite all those mistakes kids (and adults) eventually learn the proper way to say things…unless they are constantly surrounded by others who are making mistakes. Eventually, in my opinion, with enough exposure to the proper way to say things those mistakes will slowly get fixed.
We can’t wait until we think we’ll be perfect to output something. It won’t be perfect to start no matter how long you wait. This is something that I struggle with, because I feel like I’ll sound like a fool. However, I am starting to output a little more here and there, even if it’s to myself or written down.
I think my biggest fear is not necessarily sounding like a fool, but saying something, and then the other speaker says something back that I can’t understand…and then I really do stand there like a fool. Or, for the most part, I don’t have enough words to say or ask anything particularly interesting so I don’t. Actually, that’s how I’ve often felt in my native language…I’m definitely a quiet person in general and would rather just listen to others.
I still struggle with not having enough words or phrases to respond at times. The women I have a language exchange with lives in Columbia. We spend time talking about food, American issues, and our daily lives. We work on basic conversation once a week and my italki exchange partner from Madrid talk about the same topics once a week. I am working towards daily conversations that last for about 45 minutes with my different partners. I do have to keep notes about each person as it become difficult to keep track of their lives.
I would suggest making a video recording once a week. A recoding will help you see your progress. I use a program called flipgrid.
Hi, I once did this on paper for Italian, it’s a great and fun method.
If your diary is allowed to be puclic, you might want to take a look at journaly.com. It’s a journalling platform specifically made for language learners. Other users will review (like at LingQ.com) your input but they will also comment on the content, the site is more focussed on user interaction than our review system here. The platform is quite new, it was conceived by youtuber Robin MacPherson (Robin MacPherson - YouTube)