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

English
21

Would a few very broad gradings help? Even at my current level, I can at the very least tell the difference between very well written and just your average regular writing. So I haven’t been grading anything, but technically I could

Edit: I was actually interested in reading This Is How You Lose the Time War | L34 and Clockwork Orange | L38 to begin with, so I’m going to do that, and that way I can at least grade what I’ve read in comparison to these two, which will hopefully help.

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22

For a TV show rec, I think every ESL person I’ve talked to has mentioned seeing “Friends”. (B1/B2? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.) I’ve also heard “Supernatural” (B2? Has a lot of niche vocab) mentioned quite a bit too. (I’ll note that I’m a native speaker, so I’m just guessing.)

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23

Like I did with French, I compiled some lists for English of the books that have confirmed gradings in another language, to use as a jumping-off point for estimating difficulty.

If anyone wants to be added as a contributor to help fill them out, let me know!

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24

While adding Gutenberg Project links to public domain books (it’s 60+ books now), I’ve noticed that many books has a Reading level calculated with Flesch-Kincaid method. It’s only a number based on number of sentences, words and syllables of a book, but it could be used for initial grading.

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25

Thank you for adding those! I noticed someone was going through and doing so, so I’m glad I can thank you in person, haha. I’ve been going through and adding a Free tag to all those books as well as I come across them.

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26

I think Kafka’s The Metamorphosis | L30?? would be a good benchmark as well. I’d put it around level 30. Nothing too wild vocab wise but it is well written, and the sentences are neither short nor long. The weirdness factor also adds a little to the difficulty, but past the first chapter, if you understand the premise, you’re good to go.

And since it’s so short, under 50 pages, I think a bunch of people here could easily read it to have a benchmark to grade against. Although I’d love to hear what you all think of the level of this book.

(That way it’ll be perfect, I’ll have Holes | L26 , The Metamorphosis | L30?? , This Is How You Lose the Time War | L34 and Clockwork Orange | L38 to grade against, a nice spread of levels, so that hopefully we can start to have some books besides benchmarks that get non temporary levels. I just need to finish Holes and Clockwork orange first.)

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27

The German version has 100 pages +/- 15 or so. Are you sure it’s the whole story?

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28

I’m pretty sure it was the full story yes. No introduction, no analysis, no extra stories, just the novella itself. I’ve seen other English editions that are substantially longer, but they include other stuff, the basic ones with just the novella tend to be 40-70 pages long, depending on font size I imagine.

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29

I see. The German version is often sold as one whole book, and e.g. not as part of a story collection.

Then, as probably no one wants to buy a book with just about 50 pages, a publisher might adjust font size, number of lines, page size, etc. to produce as much pages as possible.

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30

Alright everyone - I’ve run some of my beta tools to calculate some good benchmarks based on current gradings and I added 7 more benchmarks (starting from The House in the Cerulean Sea in the table above)

There’s now over 92 fully graded books for English! Although we do need more items for beginners - below B1 - and videos!

Thanks so much for this! I’m taking a look now.. perhaps will add a few more benchmarks

I’ve added to the wiki above but since there are no gradings yet, i’m leaving it pending. It doesn’t make much sense to have book marks without gradings (no impact & may not be very accurate).

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31

@gillianfaith ok using your list and a few other methods, i’ve projected a bunch of book & tv ratings from other languages to English! I added 9 more book benchmarks & 16 Movie/TV benchmarks!

I will say though that these items in English don’t yet have many (if any) gradings.. but since they’re a bit more evidenced than the other proposed benchmarks, I decided to approve them. Hopefully it gets the ball rolling with Movie & TV Grading.. Folks we need a lot more gradings for Movies & TV! Books are starting to go strong now :flexed_biceps:

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32

Something like free and legal graded readers English would be great for the site. Tadoku is how I’ve discovered Natively.

I’ve quickly found Free Graded Readers website maintained by The Extensive Reading Foundation. It keeps few original books and easy versions of free domain works. There are also a bunch of links to other sites with short stories. The main Foundation site has links to graded reader publishers in the footer for people interested in physical books.

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33

Thanks for linking! It would be great to find a free graded reader site for English. Although I must admit, I think this website is pretty unintuitive and.. it’s levels seem way out of whack?? I looked at the ‘A1’ books and the Indonesian Love Story seemed way to hard. Granted as a native speaker, I probably don’t have a good sense, but I was expecting closer to “See Spot Run”.. this seems like at least Magic Tree House level.

It takes quite a bit of work to add those free web readers to the site, so I’ll only add if it’s really worthwhile.. don’t think this site meets the bar sadly.

For context, Tadoku (Japanese), Fluent With Stories (Spanish) and 두루책방 (Korean) are the level we’re looking for.

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34

i don’t know if you’re still looking for free websites for graded book but i found this one https://english-e-reader.net/

i found this file too it has a grading (made by humans) for a lot of book https://www.seg.co.jp/sss/YL/2022-04-JERA_Booklist-220316.pdf

also advertise this website in English learning communities i bet a lot of people will be happy to contribute in it and more people will be happy to use it

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