I was curious as to what other members here on lingQ use for compelling content beyond the typical newspapers, news, and literature/books in the target language. What do you all like to import / learn from? For me personally, I find websites for my hobbies in my target language via the internet (Video games, philosophy etc) and then consume both my hobbies and my language learning all in one. This really helps to make the language learning process even more enjoyable. I would be curious what everyone strategy and methods are!
I have a couple of French history books written by real historians and they make for perfect lessons as each chapter is self contained and I can focus only the parts of history I am interested in. Nearly everything I read in LingQ is now imported as there really isnāt much left that interests me enough to read it multiple times. However, I use the mini stories and Assimil for all my mobile listening practice.
I watch Mandarin Chinese childrenās shows, but these arenāt your regular friendly and fun childrenās shows, they oftentimes have twist endings which are dark and sad.
I am a generally positive guy who doesnāt like watching dark/sad content, but it is just so damn funny to watch these twisted childrenās shows, because I canāt imagine anything like them being acceptable over here in North America.
For example, hereās an episode where a villager literally threatens a monkey into making him money by killing a chicken in front of the monkey to show the monkey who is boss:
I would have never expected to find this kind of content compelling but it is just so funny in a dark way, I canāt help but learn from them lol.
What you consider compelling content changes over time, with your level and interests.
I have just begun a new phase in my main target language (Russian) using two new content sources:
On the one hand, I have begun to read āWar and Peaceā in Lingq, itās a tremendous challenge and I expect it to take me very long. Iām mixing it with other ālighterā materials.
On the other hand, Iām watching āGame of Thronesā in Russian (LOL). I found the series moderately appealing but Iād felt very bad wasting so much time with it but watching it in Russian turns that rather silly activity into a very useful learning experience: thereās a lot of interesting vocabulary and itās addictive enough to keep you interested.