FilFluent is a website specifically designed to help English learners find content that best matches their proficiency level. It offers:
● Movie/TV Show Catalog – Book Catalog: A collection where movies, TV shows, and books are classified into the six CEFR levels based on their English difficulty score. Users can contribute by rating the difficulty of content they have watched or read, helping keep the catalog reliable and up to date.
● Movie Analysis – TV Show Analysis – Book Analysis: Tools that allow users to add missing content to the catalog. The Movie and TV Show Analysis tools analyze the subtitles of any title entered and provide an accurate English difficulty score on a scale from 0 to 10. The Book Analysis tool asks users to compare the searched book with other books already in the catalog in order to assign it an English difficulty score.
● Profile: a page where you can easily manage all the movies/TV shows you’ve watched and the books you’ve read.
Please remember that, although FilFluent combines an objective automatic assessment with a subjective human assessment, it is still an estimation tool. Use it as a guide rather than a definitive measure of your ability to understand a movie or TV show.
Science suggests that to maximize language learning, English learners should consume content that is slightly above their current level, providing a manageable challenge that promotes the acquisition of new vocabulary and language structures.
Learning English through movies, TV shows, and books is one of the most effective and enjoyable ways to improve proficiency. However, choosing the right content for your level is crucial: too difficult and you'll feel overwhelmed, too easy and you won't progress. FilFluent solves this problem by analyzing and classifying movies, TV shows, and books, making sure you get the optimal challenge for your learning journey.
FilFluent ratings are interpreted according to each user’s English level, so difficulty scores become more reliable over time.
FilFluent difficulty scores are not simple arithmetic averages of user ratings. Since learners have different English levels, the same movie, TV show, or book can feel very different from one person to another.
For this reason, users are asked to set their Listening and Reading levels in their profile. When a user rates a movie, TV show, or book, FilFluent adjusts its difficulty score based on the concept of expected vote — the rating the system would expect from a learner at that level.
This method helps FilFluent make the catalog more reliable over time. A beginner and an advanced learner can both provide useful feedback, but their ratings are interpreted differently according to their English level.
Movies and TV shows have an “English Difficulty” score determined by a combination of subtitle analysis and user feedback.
Before being included in the catalog, each movie/TV show is first examined by tools that carefully analyze the subtitles. The analysis considers more than ten variables, including vocabulary complexity, lexical variability, speaking pace, and grammatical structure, to return an English difficulty score with an associated CEFR level. However, the automatic evaluation provided by this tool is not enough on its own. In fact, no algorithm can evaluate some of the parameters that make a movie or a TV show more or less complex, such as:
● Plot (a simple linear story is easier to follow than one with many flashbacks, time jumps, or complex narrative structures).
● Accents (a neutral accent is easier to understand than regional dialects or strong pronunciations).
● Metaphors, slang, and cultural references (elements strongly linked to the cultural context can be difficult for non-native speakers).
That's why, before adding a movie or TV show to the catalog, users are asked to give their own assessment, taking into account the above parameters. The user's feedback, combined with the tools analysis, will create a more reliable English difficulty score and CEFR classification. The score and CEFR level obtained are not definitive. Inside the catalog, users can rate the difficulty of movies and TV shows they have watched on a 0-10 scale. This means that the FilFluent catalog is constantly updated and becomes more reliable every day thanks to user evaluations.
Before being added to the catalog, each book is analyzed by the Book Analysis tool, which assigns an English Difficulty score based on user comparisons.
Before being added to the catalog, each book is analyzed by the Book Analysis tool. This tool (available only to users who have marked at least three books as “read” in the catalog) assigns an English Difficulty score to the analyzed book based on user comparisons. In the Book Analysis tool, users are asked to search for a title and compare the searched book with three books they have already marked as “read” in the catalog. For each book, comparisons are made across three categories:
● Vocabulary (books with common, everyday words are easier to understand than those with advanced, specialized, or literary language).
● Grammar and sentence structure (simple sentences and straightforward grammar are easier to follow than complex syntax, long sentences, or sophisticated writing styles).
● Plot and themes (clear, accessible stories are easier to comprehend than books with abstract themes, layered narratives, or deep philosophical content).
The result of the comparisons assigns an English Difficulty score to the book, which will be added to the catalog. In the catalog, users can rate the difficulty of books they have read on a 0-10 scale. These ratings help adjust the English Difficulty score over time. As more users rate books they have read, the catalog becomes more reliable while keeping the feedback process quick and simple.