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Read full storyOff2Class ESL Placement Test V2.0 is ready!
We’re proud to announce that the Off2Class ESL Placement Test V2.0 is ready for you to assign to your students!
We’ve taken the existing grammar-based Off2Class ESL Placement test (V1.0) and added Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking assessments to the tool.
Now when you press ‘Assign Test’ on our Placement Test page, you’ll have the option of adding (all or individually) Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking components to the assessment. As previously, your students start with our 100-question grammar diagnostic. We then use your student’s results to drive the level of difficulty for the other components you’ve selected.
Here’s a brief overview of what your students find in the new sections of the Off2Class ESL Placement test:
Listening Section: 12 multiple choice questions based on a short audio recording (20-minute time limit, no pausing). Provides the teacher a result that supports the candidate’s CEFR proficiency level, or alerts you to a discrepancy with it.
Reading Section: Between 9 and 12 multiple choice questions based on a written text (20-minute time limit, no pausing). Provides the teacher a result that supports the candidate’s CEFR proficiency level, or alerts you to a discrepancy with it.
Writing Section: 1 question to which the candidate provides a written response (15-minute time limit, no pausing). Provides the teacher with an example of the candidate’s writing that may assist you to determine the proficiency level.
Speaking Section: 1 question to which the candidate records a spoken response (5-minute time limit, no pausing). Provides the teacher with an example of the candidate’s speaking that may assist you to determine the proficiency level.
And that’s not all! You can now Customize your Student Learning Plans!
One of the most popular features of Placement Test V1.0 is that our system proposes Individualized Curriculums based on your student results. We’ve taken the existing Learning Plan system and given you the ability to customize the plans:
- Add lessons from our library
- Re-order lessons
- Delete lessons
- Mark lessons off as complete (or override completion status)
When you click on a Student Learning Plan tab in your student management panel you now see a ‘Customize Learning Plan’ link:
If your students sit our full placement test, we’ll even recommend lessons to add to their Learning Plans!
This way you’ll be able to blend our technical (grammar-based) recommendations with our non-technical (topic-based) recommendations, to create learning plans that are a perfect fit for your students.
And of course, you can re-edit and adapt the learning plans as you work through them with your students!
June 2017 Update!
Pro account holders on Off2Class can now print Student Achievement Certificates based on their students’ placement test results! You can learn more about all the benefits of Pro here.
We hope that the power of our Placement Test V2.0 saves you, even more time in assessing and lesson planning for your students. Let us know your questions below!
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29 Comments
Theresa says:
May 9, 2017 at 9:22 am
Exciting! Can’t wait to try!
Kris Jagasia says:
May 9, 2017 at 12:05 pm
Hi Theresa, can’t wait to hear what you think!
Lou says:
May 9, 2017 at 9:59 am
Excellent
we use at the beginning & end of 10 week blocks
can’t wait till try new additions at the end of next week
will hopefully be a great guidance indicator improvement
thanks & well done
Kris Jagasia says:
May 9, 2017 at 12:05 pm
Fantastic Lou! Please do report back on what we help you uncover about your latest intake!
Kind Regards,
Kris
Sharon McKee says:
May 9, 2017 at 6:12 pm
Great work. I feel this test will be a wonderful for students who want IELTS training. The components will help give the teacher a better understanding of the level the student is at and what areas we need to do extra work on.
Kris Jagasia says:
May 10, 2017 at 2:37 am
Absolutely Sharon!
Juan Paulo says:
May 9, 2017 at 5:05 pm
this is just too good to be true! Thank you guys! Looking forward to the webinar.
Natalia Wilson says:
May 9, 2017 at 6:11 pm
I am very excited to use that. Thank you guys!!!
Kris Jagasia says:
May 10, 2017 at 2:38 am
Cheers Natalia, we hope you enjoy and would love for you to report back your thoughts!
Shankar Padmanabhan says:
May 9, 2017 at 11:43 pm
Waiting to start a new semester with first year students . This will be really useful i feel to assess the level of individual students at the starting stage itself.
Simone says:
May 10, 2017 at 1:28 am
Thank you! Very useful. Now I don’t have to work from an external spreadsheet to organise my student’s study plan like I’ve done so far.
Kris Jagasia says:
May 10, 2017 at 2:40 am
Cheers Simone, yes and the idea is that the Learning Plans are fluid (just like teaching is) you can adjust them and re-edit them as you’re working with your students and discovering new things about their own goals and challenges.
Pamela says:
May 10, 2017 at 8:39 am
I have used this program to supplement my work with intermediate students. So I can’t wait to see what the 2.0 is going to show. Has it been made available for use yet?
Kris Jagasia says:
May 10, 2017 at 9:41 am
Hi Pamela, yes the test is live for all now. We’ll be hosting our webinar information sessions and announcing them here in the coming weeks!
Kind Regards,
Kris
IGKTeacher says:
May 10, 2017 at 6:00 pm
We’re looking forward to sending this test to our new students! 😀
Kris Jagasia says:
May 11, 2017 at 12:24 am
Great guys! I think the learning plan editor will be a great fit with IGK’s approach!
Catherine Savard says:
May 11, 2017 at 4:28 pm
Looks like a great step forward for assessment and student plan management. Once you have assigned one section of the test to a student (grammar) and they complete it, can you assign one or all of the other parts later? I have had problems with students who come back to me a semester later and want to do the test. They never did the original one that I sent them months ago and have lost the email with the link. I can’t figure out a way to give them the assessment again other than to change their email address and start fresh. This would not be a good thing with students where you want to test all four skills eventually. For the casual nature of what I do with some students, the testing procedure gets to be too long. Once they have more buy-in I feel I could come back later and do more testing.
Kris Jagasia says:
May 13, 2017 at 1:16 pm
Hi Catherine,
Thanks for the encouraging words!
When you’re assigning the test, you can select whichever sections you’d like to assign but all tests must include the grammar portion.
If your students come back to you months later without having taken the initial assignment you can just re-assign the test. We’ll wipe out the initial assignment (which they didn’t complete anyways) and we’ll post them the new assignment.
You can also re-assign the test to the same student as a progress check as we pull the questions from a very large database.
Kind Regards,
Kris
Janet says:
May 15, 2017 at 10:34 am
Can you tell me if this is suitable for Business English classes? Is it based on the CEFR?
James Heywood (Off2Class) says:
May 15, 2017 at 10:48 am
Hi Janet,
Thanks for stopping by!
The Placement Test is a general English test based on the CEFR. The test is not aimed at a particular subset of English learners and does not use language specific to Business English. Rather, we have created the test as a starting point for teachers with new and prospective students.
We have a Category of Business English lessons on the site.
Best wishes,
James
Nicole says:
May 17, 2017 at 10:37 am
Where was this when I had students? Right now, I don’t have any students to teach and this would have been an excellent tool to use. Hopefully, I will find some students to teach trial lessons to so I can use it.
James Heywood (Off2Class) says:
May 17, 2017 at 1:30 pm
Hi Nicole,
Well, the new Placement Test will be here for you when you do get your next students!
Thanks for dropping by,
James
Juan says:
May 21, 2017 at 1:33 pm
Wow, Congrats!!! you guys are really moving forward, these new tools are wonderful!!! I’m proud of you guys.
Kris Jagasia says:
May 21, 2017 at 5:01 pm
Thanks Juan! We’d love to welcome you back to the new and improved Off2Class Placement Test and Learning Plan system!
Kris
Eva says:
May 30, 2017 at 1:03 pm
I’ve just assigned the new Placement Test with all of its sections to a new student! Can’t wait to have the result back! I’m slightly worried as my student seems to be on the pre-intermediate level and do not want to scare her 🙂
It seems to be an amazing tool for starting with new students. Thanks for all your hard work!
Kris Jagasia says:
May 30, 2017 at 1:10 pm
Cheers Eva,
We’re looking forward to hearing how it goes!
Kind Regards,
Kris
Laura Alvarado Elizondo says:
August 21, 2017 at 7:36 pm
I don’t know if anyone has suggested this before but since the lesson library is divided into levels (from beginner to advanced), I think it would be good to have a level test to assess how well students have learned the studied contents. I have students who started as real beginners and perhaps taking a test at the end of each level would be more motivating for them. This could go along with Student Achievement Certificates for each level too. What do you think?
Kris Jagasia says:
August 22, 2017 at 9:00 am
Hi Laura,
That’s a fantastic idea. We’ve got a similar idea in the works that will hopefully be launched in the 4th quarter of this year. I definitely agree that re-sitting the placement test, although useful as gauge, is not ideal for boosting motivation so a level test (or something similar) is a great idea!
Kris
Laura Alvarado Elizondo says:
August 22, 2017 at 6:17 pm
That’ll be great, Kris. I’ll be looking forward to that. Thanks.
Laura