Advanced content; classical literature and audio books

It seems to me that someone was looking for advanced content for Italian or Japanese. It is useful to remember that any older classic text is usually available at Gutenberg.org. You can always import the text from there. Hopefully in a few weeks or less we will enable LingQing outside the system so that you will not have to import these texts.

There are many companies that sell excellent audio books on line. Ill Narratore for Italian, Livraphone for French. I am sure you can google and find others. This way you can enjoy the sound and still mine the texts for words and phrases. One good audio book will go a long way.

I generally find that the cost of a good audio book is well worth it compared to Librivox, unless Librivox is really well done.

If there is interest in this I could ask Il Narratore and Livraphone for some samples to put in our store. I am sure they will agree. I have discussed this with them in the past and they are favourable. However, our membership has been small and the more advanced content has not been as popular as beginner content so that it did not seem worthwhile pursuing too far.

How much interest is there out there and for which languages?

I was one of those asking for more advanced content, but not necessarily literature. The Japanese Language Proficiency Tests have a wide variety of content. I guess I’d like to see more scientific articles and articles related to trends in technology or issues in society. That’s the kind of vocabulary that usually shows up on these kinds of tests.