Making a Chinese language blog

Probably lots of you really advanced people are doing this already,  but for those who aren't, I'd like to suggest keeping a Chinese language blog as a method of working on your Chinese.

Maybe you aren't interested in written Chinese, only spoken (Chinesepod is SO GREAT for working on listening) but if you are, I have found that actually writing in Chinese is super helpful.

Here's my process, in case you want somewhere to start:

1. Compose in Chinese characters, with free use of dictionaries to help out.

2. Translate into English. (I post in both languages, so in case I make a blunder so collossal that my Chinese is completely incomprehensible - hey, it happens, a bilingual friend can help me out.)

3. Copy out the hanzi in a paper notebook, for handwriting practice.

4. When people correct my poor Chinese, make corrections in both the online blog as well as the notebook.

Right now I still consider myself a Newbie/lower Elementary, so my "blog posts" tend to be only a few sentences long, but hey, it's something, right?

I'm blogging at Lifeinchina.cn, which is actually an English language blogging community for Chinese people. I found it through some of my students who were practicing their English there, and the community there seems super friendly and encouraging to laowai who want to use their site and get a few pointers from the native Chinese speakers. I figure turnabout is fair play, if they give me pointers on my blog, I'll visit theirs and give them some English language pointers, too.

Anyway, here's my new blog link, hopefully I will keep it up even though it makes my brain hurt, and if any of you are blogging in Chinese, especially at a similar level, I'd love to check out your sites, too.

http://www.lifeinchina.cn/lic/?13142