Wow, people are adding French books & videos fast!
In order to get the grading system working, we need many objects which will serve as the ‘benchmark’ for the grading system. As an example, I usually choose Harry Potter volume 1 and put it at lvl 29/30 (~B2). This makes it similar to the Japanese Grading system.
Once we have a series of book & videos set at certain levels, then the grading system starts to take shape.
Post below and we’ll fold it into the table. Thanks for helping build this out!
I won’t be much help because all of my finished French media is over 10 years ago, and I don’t really have a solid understanding of Natively levels to begin with, but
In this case, can the benchmarks (or some of them) just be decided by comparing the levels of the same book in other languages? I know different languages have different challenges, so the levels won’t be a 1:1 match between languages, but they could probably be used as a starting point.
It’s been my experience that translated books are often easier in French than native French books of the same genre. I actually listened to the audiobook of both the Japanese and French* for this volume and think it’s easier in French than in Japanese despite my Japanese level being higher.
Although you are incorrectly linking 本を守ろうとする猫の話 | L30 when Le Chat qui voulait sauver la bibliothèque corresponds to 君を守ろうとする猫の話 | L30 , the second book. I already sent feedback noting it was incorrectly imported as a stand alone when it’s book 2 of a series
I will say that some of the difficulties in Japanese though are kanji. Like if you look across Japanese and Korean, books will have significantly lower level in Korean, I’m assuming because there’s less barrier to start reading compared to Japanese.
Maybe this is only an issue at the low end, since one assumes a certain kanji knowledge when challenging Harry Potter (or not, since it’s always touted as the best beginner series ).
Also maybe it’s just an artifact of way more books/gradings in Japanese..
It’s the best beginners series if you have the books memorized, like I (unfortunately) do
But as a general beginner book without that? No. It’s like all the advice for reading Le Petit Prince in French as a first book. When I was A2-ish that book was way too hard! But if you grew up reading it and knew the story already it would probably be fine.
I somewhat wonder if I should throw La femme de ménage | L30?? into the ring as another B1 book because even though I DNF’d it (I was so bored, sorry ) it was incredibly plain writing from the first person perspective so no issues of literary flourish or passé simple (grammar form used in a lot of literary works and considered to be B2+ a least by my grammar guides).
It would probably be more accurate to use Spanish books for this, as the challenges are pretty similar between both languages. Japanese is so different, I don’t think it would work.
I posted the below in the product request FRENCH before I saw this thread. oops. anyway …
I’ve been trying to keep track of relative difficulty for the french tv/movies I’ve watched and the books I’ve read, but it’s a shambolic mess.
When you do have it up and running, I can fairly quickly add 150ish series/movies and another dozen+ books with rudimentary difficulty grading … and hundreds more that I’ve watched with subtitles or read in translation to fill things out.
Say I add two new books to the French section. I can rate them against each other but I’m guessing that for the ratings to link to the Natively system I will have to rate them against an existing, already rated book. Am I right? I have a decent library of French novels I want to work my way through and add to Natively. Maybe I need to read your chosen base benchmark, Harry Potter volume 1.
You can grade any books against any other books you’ve read of the same language; in my understanding they won’t lose that temporary ?? rating until they’re graded against something set as a benchmark, which brandon talks a little about above. So there’s no need to explicitly read a benchmark book; the ratings still “count”. Eventually books rated against non-?? books will proliferate and you’ll naturally have your library reflect that. Does that make sense?
welcome @RayS1952! Yes what @eefara says is correct - we keep your gradings stored and will process them later when there’s at least one book in the comparsion without ‘??’. So, even if your grading doesn’t make an impact now it’s still super useful! You will just see the impact later, when the grading system becomes more mature.
Although, if you want to target reading some of the benchmark books and make comparisons against them, that is also helpful as well!
I see that there are currently no French books with a definite rating. I saw Harry Potter vol. 1 mentioned above but have since realised it hasn’t yet been decided. May I suggest that it be given the same rating as it has in the Spanish section? I know it’s a fairly loose connection but they are at least reasonably closely related languages. Only a suggestion.
Since you’re like the 3rd person to suggest that, let’s do it.
Yes, i haven’t started actually enabling the benchmarks but will do today
And FWIW we will have multiple rounds of setting benchmarks & recalculating the whole grading system, so if anyone thinks certain benchmarks are off please don’t be afraid to say.
Alright! So I went through and added the proposed benchmarks you all were suggesting (with some tweaks per your guidance). I also went through all the fully graded spanish books and tried to match the authors to find matching french entries to benchmark. I was somewhat successful, got around 9 benchmarks, as you can see above.
We only have 183 gradings so unfortunately we don’t yet have enough gradings against the bookmarks to promote any books to ‘fully graded’ yet. But it’s a start! You will now see 11 non-textbook book series / standalone books appear as ‘fully graded’ now - those are the benchmarks!
I started up a list for benchmarking (and general) reference of French books with confirmed levels in other languages! I only read French and Japanese, so the other languages I just skimmed to see if I could see any obvious matches, and if anyone else wants to be added as a collaborator to help fill it out let me know!
Enacted · 
Proposed
Books
).
) it was incredibly plain writing from the first person perspective so no issues of literary flourish or passé simple (grammar form used in a lot of literary works and considered to be B2+ a least by my grammar guides).
