Come help the grading system! Request for Benchmark Books, Movie & TV Shows

Ok! I’ve added our new benchmarks. I decided to put Crónica at lvl 42 and El cartero at lvl 38. See below:

I also developed a new automated process for wiping the current difficulty ratings and recalculating the whole system strictly from the benchmarks and gradings. So, you may have noticed that Crónica actually became fully graded at lvl 37 this morning, but this process has wiped that.

We now have a solid amount of C2 & C1 content! Woohoo! Give it a check and see what you think. I’m feeling pretty darn good about the book system, thank you all for the tremendous work so far :smiling_face:.

The only thing remaining that would be great for the book system is a large, free, online grader reader set similar to the Tadoku series for Japanese, or 두루책방 - Free for Korean. If you know of one of those, do let me know.

Otherwise, all the focus now goes to Movies & TV benchmarks! I’ll continue to query you all about those.

6 Likes

These aren’t what you’re looking for as far as a nice tidy comprehensive pack of graded readers but I’ve had these bookmarked for a while, haven’t poked around much:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Spanish/comments/ko3rcj/learn_and_read_as_well_as_a_mexican_native/

Publicaciones - Libro Almanaque Escuela para Todos (Not free, but inexpensive)

3 Likes

This is very interesting. Not exactly perfect, but perhaps the closest we’ll come in Spanish :thinking:

Thanks for those links! I did add this Paco Ardit series which seems commonly recommended on Reddit, but it is paid.

2 Likes

Found this on the internet: free graded readers, not exactly books but longer texts taken from the books and divided into three levels (inicial, intermedio, avanzado) published by Centro Virtual Cervantes CVC. Lecturas paso a paso
I don’t know when they published it, but the graphics are not very modern :sweat_smile:

Another free resource with text divided into levels (A, B and C this time) is Textos para aprender español gratis | HABLACULTURA
The pdfs are not free, but the articles published on the website seem to be all free and have audio recording.

4 Likes

I just checked it out, those articles are pretty nice. Do you know if C stands for advanced, or are there just arbitrary levels? Because at least for the one I read, either a lot of what I’ve read is very much under-leveled currently on Natively, or this one wasn’t actually that advanced.

I’m not missing the irony of reading an article about Spanish napping culture and the benefits of napping at 1AM though, so I think I’ll go sleep now :joy:

3 Likes

FWIW, I almost always assume advanced graded readers are under-leveled. Unless it’s practice materials strictly for the test, these companies always make these things way too easy, somewhat general knowledge.

As an example, Tadoku does the same thing… I think they claim their most advanced material is for the N3 (~B1) but it’s way easier than that… N4 (~A2) tops.

3 Likes

lol that napping article :rofl: to me it looked like they were stuffing it with vocab that was on a C1 list somewhere.

That is a nice resource though, I’ll add it to my bloated bookmark folder :dragon:

4 Likes

:joy: that website.

Hmm this is also interesting. The website is a little jumbled, but could be useful. I like that they have audio. Definitely something to keep in mind.

2 Likes

Those articles are taken from their Punto y Coma magazine, and the texts there are divided by CEFR levels. It is as @joreneereads said, the articles are stuffed with vocabulary you’re supposed to know at each level (if anyone’s interested here is the official curriculum made by Instituto Cervantes CVC. Plan Curricular del Instituto Cervantes. Índice.)

image

3 Likes

I’ve just noticed Elite histórias breves : Guzmán, Caye, Rebe is currently L25??. For this one, the automatically generated gradings didn’t give me a chance to compare it to Elite, but I would say it is at least as hard as the main series (if not slightly harder because they speak in a strange way due to being on hallucinogenic mushrooms).

2 Likes

I’m moved it to lvl 35 so you should be prompted now for elite :slight_smile:

1 Like

Did you mean level 24 when you updated this list? It comes up as level 22 when you look at the series on Natively.

1 Like

Good question. These ‘benchmark’ ratings only are initially set there. Otherwise they operate like normal books - they can move up and down if they get compared to other ‘fully graded’ books.

In this case, it was graded easier than ‘El Principito’, ’ El Alquimista’ and ‘Stamped’, among other things, so the level has been pushed down.

3 Likes

I’ve added a few Movie & TV benchmarks around lvl 28 which has triggered about 30 items to become fully graded.

I was also going to auto mark gradings from Japanese, but I wasn’t as sure if those would translate well to Spanish. Does Encanto | L30?? at lvl 28 make sense ( that’s what it is for Japanese). For reference, Coco is lvl 23.

If you have any ideas on Movie / TV benchmarks, please do let me know!

3 Likes

I came to this site from the Dreaming Spanish Reddit. I’ve only been studying Spanish for a little over a month so I’m using Natively to plan out what I’ll watch/read when, but haven’t actually been able to log anything because native content is beyond me now.

Beginner videos seem especially sparse for now. Would it make sense to add Dreaming Spanish videos as benchmarks? I’ve noticed that some Dreaming Spanish videos have a CEFR level in the thumbnail. A1 for superbeginner, A2 for beginner, B1 for Intermediate, and B2 for Advanced.

I looked for longer videos for each level that have close to the median difficulty score for that level on the Dreaming Spanish website:
Superbeginner/A1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jtnHJfCNzY
Beginner/A2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqsWsJE6zKA
I can only add two links as a new user but the Intermediate/B1 video is called “Sunday at the Ancient City”.

Maybe you would prefer to add the videos that are explicitly labeled with a CEFR level, but I thought longer would be more important since they would have to be compared with longer movies and tv series.

3 Likes

Welcome! Unfortunately, YouTube videos aren’t able to be added to natively at the moment, hence why Dreaming Spanish isn’t on there yet. :frowning: It’s on the list of eventual wants, but the site’s run and programmed by a single guy, so he can get stretched thin at times.

There’s also the matter of natively having a comparatively small Spanish userbase at the moment, hence the small range of beginner stuff; so any and all new users we can get are invaluable for grading purposes. :slight_smile:

I definitely recommend posting in the forums for recommendations, though! We do have some Spanish-learning regulars, and I’m sure they can find some good recommendations!

4 Likes

Spanish is still in beta, so a lot of levels aren’t set, particularly for videos. Currently, I would say that Peppa Pig | L30?? and Bluey | L15?? are mostly considered easy to watch across languages. And probably Dora, la exploradora | L30?? as well. Bob Esponja | L30?? also has mostly simple vocab and sentences, but the voice acting is a bit much, so imo if you’re going for no subtitles, it might actually be a lot harder than the other ones above.

If you want to discover some more ressources, the type that aren’t on Natively, there are some here : Share your favourite Spanish resources!

Also, @brandon , could we get the temporary level for those lowered? These temporary L30?? make no sense.

3 Likes

Thank you eefara and HopeWaterfall for the responses and suggestions! I can see how those videos wouldn’t really fit on the site right now.

I am back to see if it would make sense to set a grade for Peppa Pig. I think of it as the easiest a tv show could be without being specifically for learners and it has a good number of gradings already. If it’s set as a benchmark it might make it easier for the levels in between to fill in as well.

I think it fits in A2 and here’s a Reddit post that agrees. If I’m comparing it with the graded books, I’d probably put it at an L14 or L15. Obviously it’s kinda tricky to compare books and videos because they’re so different, but I’d say definitely somewhere in that A2 range.

5 Likes

Ok very late to this, but put peppa pig at L15 and bluey at L19! Hopefully that gets more ratings rolling :slight_smile:

If anyone has more suggestions, let me know!!

[PS: Sadly the books adding function looks a little broken right now, looking at it tomorrow!]

6 Likes