Back to the basics!

A couple of weeks ago, I began to write short texts in Japanese on Lang8. My goal was (and is) to write at least one short text per week. Interestingly, after the first four weeks my motivation and urge to write something in Japanese increased. The intervals became shorter. 

Most of the time the News Web Easy articles gave the impulse. After reading an interesting article I thought "Hey, I could write something about that!". This way, I practiced the vocabulary and sentence structures I saw in these articles. 

While doing this I regulary left my comfort zone and made many mistakes. I became aware of my weaknesses. Mostly my word choice was not native like. 

I realized that I need to improve my basics first. Knowing advanced vocabulary is of no use as long as I can't use it right. 

I also need to immerse more. While writing I often needed to look up example sentences in order to express my thoughts. I changed these sentences according to my idea and combined them to more complex sentences. But without this extra help I wouldn't be able to write at this level, I think. I need to absorb much much more sentence patterns. They need to sink into my unconcious.