Self learners, where do you go to get homework help?

[dtwigs]

I just tried to sign up for lang-8 as thats where I have been pointed to go to get help with homework, however they are no longer accepting new members. Do you have any resources you would recommend?

For now perhaps you all can help me with my first ever homework assignment:

こんにちは！
ダンです。私は忙しいですけど、幸せですよ。
学生だった。今は職人です。
趣味はビーデオガームや読書や。。。日本語も好きで。
ベジタリアンなので、肉が好きじゃないですけど、卵がとても好きですよ。
もちろん、一番好きな食べ物はラーメンですよ。
じゃ、ね！

Please set me straight : )

[softlyraining]

こんにちは！
ダンです。私は忙しいですけど、幸せですよ。
学生でした。今は職人です。
趣味はビデオゲーム/テレビゲーム/ゲームや読書など。。。日本語も好きです。
ベジタリアンなので、肉が好きじゃないですけど、卵がとても好きですよ。
もちろん、一番好きな食べ物はラーメンですよ。
よろしくお願いします！

You start off using です, but then to say you were a student, switch to the more informal だった. I would change that to でした.

I gave three possibilities for saying “video games” that could work. I’ve heard people use all three to describe the same thing, so choose whichever floats your boat. For listing things, や links two things together, so if you want to mention three or more, you can use “AとかBとか” etc. Since you mention three things (one of which is a trail-off) I changed your second や to など (Japanese version of etc.). You forgot a す at the end of the same sentence.

Since this reads like an introduction, you should end it with よろしくお願いします. For more casual introductions (like with people your age in a casual setting), you can use よろしく on its own.

Those are the corrections I came up with, but if anyone else has any suggestions, they’re welcome!

Good job with your first assignment!

[dtwigs]

Ah thank you for the help! I am learning grammar through TK (guidetojapanese.com) and I’m really liking how its taught. However, I had no idea that “だった” was informal and i’d never even heard of “でした” as the past conjugation for nouns/adjectives. So thank you for teaching me that. Perhaps TK will teach the noun and adjective conjugations a bit more thoroughly in a later chapter. I’ve gotta work on staying in either formal or informal conversation. Not feeling too strong on the “declarative だ” yet, so I am just using “です” for everything.

Thanks again!

[colorandlight]

The Tae Kim guide doesn’t go over formal conjugations until the second part of his guide. I used it for a while and then switched to imabi, which I found helped me really understand grammar a lot better.

Personally I’m finding the combination of imabi.net and some grammar books to be a lot better than Tae Kim, simply because these resources have a lot more content and much more detailed and nuanced explanations.