English From TV

Learn English with popular TV Shows

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Learn English from TV: Turn TV time into Study English time 🎬

Inspiration 💡

Working in Japan, everyone asked me: “What’s the best way to learn English?” The answer’s obvious — TV shows. But most people don’t actually do it. The few who binge-watch and talk about the shows? Their speaking improves.

Existing materials miss the point — boring news articles or random TV clips with no flow. I built Binge Learn English to fix that.

What it does ⚡

Learn English from TV turns streaming shows into English lessons.

  • 📺 Custom episode-based worksheets with key phrases, natural expressions, and discussion questions
  • 🌱 Community + gamification to keep learners motivated
  • 💬 Optional 1:1 lessons with native teachers using interactive whiteboards + personalized prompts

It uses the TV shows to anchor new phrases with context. Situation, Emotion, Visual, Sound... Bust most importantly, it makes binge-watching productive — without ruining the fun.

What it does for me:

  • Low ticket item to park churned students and reengage later.
  • Top of funnel item to warm up leads and increase CV on trial lessons.

How I built it 🛠️

Solo project built with:

  • BOLT.new + Supabase for backend
  • ChatGPT, Notion, Canva, Make.com for materials + automation
  • TMDb API for TV data

Challenges 🚧

Time - Building this on the side of a full-time job — juggling teaching, marketing, system building, and validation all at once. Bolt will hopefully finally be my break!

Challenges with Bolt:

  • Bolt over all has been AMAZING. Recommending it to everyone I see.
  • But there were problems with troubleshooting, authentication, loading user data, timezones... Things that are probably common knowledge to developers, but take me time to learn the concepts.

Accomplishments 🏆

One of my students got unsolicited praise:

“That guy’s English really improved.”

That’s when I knew it was REALLY working.

What I learned 📚

  • People need community and human connection to stay engaged (Good Pressure)
  • Conversational English Lessons are like gym memberships... people churn. With BOLT i'm hoping to get a low ticket annual subscription to keep a pulse and reengage churned students.
  • With 0 developer background, I had chatGPT help with prompting BOLT and explaining what was going on. But when ChatGPT was acting suspicious BOLT chat was actually really helpful.

What’s next 🚀

Combine systems into one polished service
Launch two tiers:

  • Lower: worksheets, flashcards, gamified community
  • Higher: add 1:1 native lessons

Goal: grow enough to replace my 9-5. Less Selfish Goal: Have fun watching TV and talking about it with more people.

Built With

  • bolt
  • supabase
  • tmdb
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