Student Academic Progress Check

Listening is a support skill that can quickly help you build your vocabulary, comprehension, grammar, and speaking skills. It can also help you work on your pronunciation to make sure you are easily understood despite any accent you might carry from your native language. This is why it is important to practice listening to native English speakers every day. Although you will be immersed in English while studying at American English Language School, making this a natural part of every class you take here, we also want to make sure you are engaging in purposeful listening that extends beyond class time. We accomplish this by having students listen to a wide variety of sources, including videos that accompany our textbooks, clips from popular American TV shows, audiobooks of common folktales, podcasts on many different topics, and informative TED Talks. In addition to all of language-based skills you will improve in, you will also learn a lot about American culture and will get to engage in discussions on each of the listening assignments, giving you double the practice! While Levels Basic-1 will listen first in class and again at home, Levels 2-5 will often be asked to listen first at home and complete the associated activities before coming to class to discuss.

Each teacher will be observed once per month for a total of 3 observations per quarter. Two of the observations will be unplanned and one observation will be planned. The unplanned observation is when the Assistant Director of Faculty views the class without the teacher knowing ahead of time. The last observation of the quarter will be planned in order for the teacher to make up for any mistakes that they made during the previous observations. The planned observation will show if the teacher is capable of learning from their mistakes and taking advice from their superiors. The observation form will be used each time. For any items that are not observable in that class (i.e. Assistant Director of Faculty didn’t stay long enough to see it that day, that doesn’t happen in that type of class, etc.), the item will not be scored and will not count towards that evaluation.

Every week, our ESL students do a variety of activities based on lessons from the unit they learn in class. These assignments include a weekly reading assignment where they will read a book and do homework outside of class and will come to class to discuss the book and go over the vocabulary words from the book. The students will also do their portfolio assignments in class which includes a listening activity, writing activity, and an activity project. They will also be asked to do a writing assignment and edit it with their peers using our online writing program that discusses topics outside of the unit they are learning. In addition, students are also assigned a daily listening assignment where they have to answer questions based on what they listened to. Lastly, students will have weekly unit tests on Fridays based on the unit they learned that week. All of these assignments and tests are considered the weekly student performance and will affect 30% of the teacher’s evaluation grade.

Each quarter, students will be asked to fill out a Student Opinion Questionnaire (S.O.Q) that asks them to agree or disagree with a series of statements about their teacher and the education they are receiving at AELS. The S.O.Q also includes a number of short-response questions for which students can provide specific feedback.

Periodically throughout the quarter, the Assistant Director of Faculty will be checking certain aspects of a teacher’s performance. These can include punctuality, daily comments, student performance, student complaints, etc. Each time an item is checked, a “grade” will be recorded for the teacher’s performance in that area. At the end of the quarter, the Assistant Director of Faculty will be able to review the grades given to the teacher for each intangible item along with the date each grade was given. A score will be determined from that.