I find it hard to find german content that i enjoy

iam trying to find content that actullay interesst me but the content i find on lingQ is mostly about a city in germany,austira or swisserland or about learning langauges and i dont find either of those interesstening so what should i do? am i stuffed and have to go through less interessting content to get to the more insterresting content?

4 Likes

Buy e-books you’d enjoy reading and upload them to LingQ as a private lesson. (Might take a bit of finessing)

Use the LingQ Netflix importer to bring in subtitles of German shows such as Babylon Berlin, Dark, etc. (very easy)

The public content available on LingQ is really just an appetizer, the real meat of the site has always been the import feature for me.

6 Likes

The content library is the weakest point of LingQ.

I think it’s because the people providing most of this material are the tutors, that is, people who work within the teacher-student paradigm, rather than within the input-based paradigm. That’s why the stuff in the library resembles so much the kind of texts our teachers gave us in the classroom… or at least that’s the idea I got, but I may be wrong.

My choice at the moment is to ignore the part of the site based on tutors, and just use it for the reader tool, importing my own stuff.

What level are you? I’ve been studying German for a couple of years and may be able to give you a few ideas on interesting material, if you still haven’t explored much yourself.

2 Likes

I wonder what kind of German content would be interesting for you.
I’m writing a lot of German podcasts here and I try to pay attention to the needs of learners.
For example, here are two of my podcasts about computers:
WAS IST INTERNET: Login - LingQ
GEBURTSSTUNDE DES INTERNETS: Login - LingQ
If you are interested in literature, you can read my German podcast - DIE GEBRĂśDER GRIMM:
Login - LingQ
And here are two of my German podcasts for the advanced learners:
Meine deutsche GroĂźmutter: Login - LingQ
Die Geschichte des Neujahrsbaumes: Login - LingQ
Good luck with German! - Viel Erfolg!

4 Likes

German LingQ 34-52
Vera and jolanda

It took for a while for me as well, to find content that is really interesting for me. But slowly I found some good books (without audio) and some good Vloggers (MaiLab). Then I found good content on LingQ again. Yes, you need to put the effort into it and you need to know what keeps you continue reading in German.

true i could to look for thing outside lingQ i just have problems with youube and it keep on always sugesting me english videos i once did try to manualy look up german videos my self and i did watched them but then the youtube algothrim only sugested german videos from that youtuber. i have around 3,300 known words and i mostly look at intermidiate 1 content

i will look at those not all of your stuff i find boring i have enjoyed some of your stuff.

i will try that

ok

Don’t rely on the LingQ - import the content you like. Actually this is exactly what Steve says.
For example, I like YouTube and therefore created a thread with the list of channels I discovered so far: https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/de/web/community/forum/content-forum/german-youtube-channels-with-s

1 Like

You can try typing something like “ganze folge” into youtube search and see what comes up.

If you are looking for original german material, I would suggest the following: alfred j. kwack, die mumins, bernd das brot. They are kids shows, but pretty enjoyable as an adult too, and they are pretty good for a beginner-intermediate.

Soap operas are also good, because they are designed for busy housewives, so you don’t need to get every word to understand what’s going on. The classic one is Lindenstrasse, which you can find on youtube.

As far as written material goes, an online magazine that I really liked was jetzt.de. Give it a try.

If you don’t know many words yet, I would also suggest the books from Leonhard Thoma. He writes graded readers which only contain the most common words, but he still manages to write engaging stories with those words. He’s really a treasure for learners of the German language.

1 Like

You haven’t said what interests you exactly.?

I read a lot from https://www.nachrichtenleicht.de/ . You can import articles from there-btw, I think some user on here is actively importing things so you may be able to just search on lingq. There a different themes…news, culture, sports, etc. There’s got to be some items in there that interest you maybe?

The Slow German podcast is great: Slow German - lerne Deutsch mit Annik! - YouTube

You can use the lingq browser extension to import these into Lingq.

The Learn German with Stories books from Andre Klein are great. Amazon.com: André Klein: books, biography, latest update

I’ve not tried to import the whole book, but I have imported individual captures with copy and paste from Amazon Kindle. I’m not sure about DRM and the importing of e-books as a whole . He has audiobooks for all of these too. He has a couple more series that I think are slightly more advanced.

Here’s a link of a huge # of potential resources:

https://blog.kwiko.app/learn-german/german-language-resources/ultimate-list-of-free-german-language-resources/

ok

ok thanks. i like reading things about lingistics and would not mind reading novels/stories cant think of anything else i like

I am unsure what you like. I found a news-blog, and in that they have a “Vorlese” Option, meaning, you have audio.

The language is advanced though.

1 Like

If you have a Netflix account, you can import German movies into LingQ and read them.

You can find content on

mdr.de – Radio, Fernsehen, Nachrichten für Mitteldeutschland | MDR.DE

https://www.zdf.de/

https://www.thegermanproject.com/

and YouTube too.

All of which can be imported to LingQ… the above is literally 10000000 hours of stuff you can go through.

3 Likes

Here is a great website I just found with tons of articles on different topics.

3 Likes

I myself like the news and imported thousands of news articles from different Spanish language newspapers. With the advent of the new NetFlix extension, I was able to import the foreign language subtitles/transcript of the dozens of Spanish movies and TV shows I watched. I wish I had that at the beginning of this process rather than near the end. I’ll do the same for my next language. So I would start there.

If you are stuck for ideas, why “re-invent the wheel?” I’m assuming you learned English as a second language, so why not start there? Think back to all the types of material that you have been using up to this point (or used to use) and then look for their German equivalents. Although it’s best to do it with truly “authentic content” (ie for Germans, by Germans), you could use a German translation of something in your native language, or another you know reasonably well (eg English). For example, a lot of people on this forum have had luck with Harry Potter stuff or foreign subtitles of an American movie.

1 Like

I totally agree with this idea! I have collected a lot of great content in German, Dutch French and Spanish by matching up Audible.com audio books (Luisterijk.com and BOL.com in het Nederlands) with the kindle or e-book version. I convert the kindle books or e-books into text files using 3rd party software (I don’t think the publishers like this but I only do it for personal use and I already paid for the books) and just listen to the audible audio. You can convert audible into mp3 but I don’t usually bother since it is more of a pain than it is worth and I always have my audio player/iPhone handy to listen to the content at any time. You can easily enter the statistical data into the lingQ tracking if you like that sort of thing. There is so much content out there now, and so much variety in subject matter, it is amazing!

In the past it used to cost a small fortune to get audio-books on cassettes and then came the cd versions (I paid $80 UDS for Don Quijote complete audio cds!) but now, 15USD$ gets me 20 to 40 hours of professionally produced and narrated audio for listening every month! I can hardly keep up with it. Sometimes I get so engrossed in the stories I can listen and read for several hours and wonder what happened to the time! LingQ is great for the structure to deep dive into your reading, and record your progress for motivation and the forum is fun, ( I haven’t tried the conversations or writing exchange yet) but t_harangi is right, the content here is just an appetizer. A lot of the LingQ content is good, some if it is even amazing if you spend some time sifting, but unfortunately most amateur and copyright free productions cannot compare with the quality of a professionally produced recording! Commercially produced content is well worth the expense if you can afford it.

By the way, I have no affiliation with Amazon, Audible or any other commercial enterprise including LingQ aside from being a paying subscriber and customer and I did not receive any payment or financial renumeration for posting this!

1 Like