I used Lang-8 quite a lot as a learner and a corrector.
My conclusions:
The correction quality is very, very varying, and it’s difficult for a learner to find out which corrections (if you have several) are best.
You cannot influence who does the correction.
The corrections are sentence by sentence with the corrected words in a different color.
In some languages you get corrections sometimes within an hour (German, Japanese, Chinese), in some very often in weeks or never (French, English). You have no influence on this. It depends also whether it’s summer or winter, holiday season or not, and many other things.
Normally correctors are normal people who correct according to their own ability…
"No. If I would offer tutoring for free I would have more students. I would have all the students who want to have tutoring service but don’t want to pay for it. "
No, you would stop doing tutoring.
(I made such a decision already – no tutoring, no uploads, no points. Why should I earn points that go away after 3 months because I don’t find suitable tutoring?? It’s wasted time. I use LingQ just for reading and listening.)
@edwin - Your arguments are quite interesting. I haven’t read the book yet. Perhaps I will read it some time and let you know if I agree with your opinion. Thanks
@Oscar: you remind me of a true incident. I was at the airport with my colleague and saw him holding this book ‘Free’. I asked if he got it for free, he said he bought it. I told him I read the book for free. I borrowed it from the library!
My ‘free’ argument seems a bit harsh. But I want to help the content providers. I don’t want them to repeat the same mistake. Perhaps someone who tried charging for content a few years ago could speak up and share their experience here.
A writing correction (of a French text) here @ LingQ has much more quality than @ Lang-8.
But there are of course exceptions, e.g. Chinese corrections are mostly very short and have not a lot of value
@Peter: I agree the service quality is different. But this is like the “dollar store” argument. Many learners are not writing a book or publishing a poem. Their can only write simple stuff and just want them to be corrected. In this case, Lang-8 fits the need perfectly.
As for LingQ, they can aim for advanced language learners who wants to publish their work.
@edwin,
"I told him I read the book for free. I borrowed it from the library! "
That’s not true!!! you paid for it!!! How? You pay taxes to the goverment, and then the goverment pays to the copyrighted providers for using books in libraries.
If you want to publish your work, you might want to take it to an editor, not just a native.
But if I want to make forum posts, or blog entries about last weekend, or send an email to a friend, I’m not going to wait (potentially) several weeks for my correction.
@hape - Yes, I too have been very happy with the standard of corrections I have received here. I can’t say I’ve tried Chinese yet.
Press the DONATE button if you’d like to thank the provider of this lesson with some points. This will encourage her/him to make more lessons like this
Here is the way I think people should make points (or money) at LingQ. It is only my opinion, feel free to disagree.
People on the Internet are really not selling content, or e-books, or mp3s, etc. They are selling themselves. That’s why they don’t make a living by simply selling those stuff. They make speeches, seminars, concerts, etc.
That’s why people are talking about ‘personal branding’ all over the place. Steve and Benny are essentially doing this. They are building they own ‘brands’.
At LingQ, enthusiasts should give away their podcasts and content for free to build their brands. Then they charge for their services (tutoring). In fact, I see that some members are already doing this and presumably making a lot of points.
Berta, what I am saying is the author is selling his book (on Amazon) and he has been making money for content (that’s a contradiction to me).
I used your link to download the book (from a megaupload page). I expected to see a copyleft like a Common Creative license or something like that, but in the pdf book says (page 3):
His book was legally available for free in ebook and unabridged mp3 format for a limited time, which was shown in my link on page 4. This was part of his strategy to create buzz and increase sales of his book. In his book he is not saying that everything should be free forever. “Free” is not a moral statement from him, he is saying that free can be a part of the strategy of a successful business.
Ok Angela, let’s assume then that the author wants to make money selling content by doing different strategies of marketing. There is no an strange “law of free” that claims everything must be free and it’s going to be free like someone said in this thread.
