Job Discussion Forums

ntropy · Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 671 Location: ghurba

You will shortly be hearing from my solicitor.

I have exclusive use of the term ESL Tool. My colleagues have been calling me one for decades.

Seriously, very interesting site. Well done.

matttheboy · Joined: 01 Jul 2003 Posts: 854 Location: Valparaiso, Chile

Teacher in Rome · Joined: 09 Jul 2003 Posts: 1286

I think it's laziness on the part of teachers to copy pre-written phrases and combine them to form an "evaluation". In any case, the amount of trouble you are going to go to in order to find "alternative" phrases for every section of the evaluation would surely be equivalent to the time it would take to write from scratch.

However, I teach fee-paying adults, rather than school children, and I can imagine that in writing evaluations for school pupils you are not going to need to address the question of whether student objectives were met.

I agree with Zero Hero in that as a teacher, a part of your paid responsibility is to write a final evaluation. Your students are entitled to receive a detailed report - with examples, as another poster has pointed out - on their individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as recommendations for future learning. This is also a matter of good administrative sense: if the student returns for a follow-up course, the next teacher has a good indication of the areas to concentrate on.

jay-shi · Joined: 28 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

Gregor · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 842 Location: Jakarta, Indonesia

Wow.
Jay shi, the ESL Tool is very helpful. I have been using a similar thing for a while now, because I had the comments translated into Chinese for the Ss's parents.
I'm writing just out of amazement that there are actually teachers in existance who PREFER to do THAT MUCH WORK.
Man, oh man. People will complain about and criticize ANYTHING. Teachers should make their lives as difficult as possible, simply because they are paid for their work? Is that honestly what I'm reading? That's INSANE.
Way to go, Jay Shi, and thank you for sharing.

Teacher in Rome · Joined: 09 Jul 2003 Posts: 1286

JonnytheMann · Joined: 01 Dec 2004 Posts: 337 Location: USA

@ Teacher in Rome

chinagirl · Joined: 27 May 2003 Posts: 235 Location: United States

No one said that you couldn't personalize the report cards after using the software to generate set phrases. Now teachers can spend those recaptured hours on lesson plans and curriculum development, which we also get paid to do.

Thanks, Jay-shi, for saving us from typing unnecessarily. I also try to "work smarter" not harder every day.

Chinagirl
(ESOL teacher - qualified and certified in every way) Wink

jay-shi · Joined: 28 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

Thanks to everyone who has given me so much positive feedback.

Summer camp at my school has finally ended and I have quite a bit of time to put into esltool.com .

I noticed many people have been using the site to write up many evaluations, the top user used it for 214 evaluations! I hope it's saved many of you lots of time.

Stay tuned for more upgrades on the site very soon.

Russell Hadd · Joined: 06 May 2004 Posts: 181

Stosskraft · Joined: 12 Apr 2004 Posts: 252 Location: Japan

Great site, simply amazing tool.

Please ignore some of the trollish comments here, they are not worth you wasting your or anybody else's breath.

I cant wait to see the upgrades ! Very Happy

cmp45 · Joined: 17 Aug 2004 Posts: 1475 Location: KSA

I think it is a good idea.
One thing you may want to have included in the website is some sort of component /form for teachers to fillout say after a term or year of using the evaluation form to evaluate just what the reaction is from students, parents, and administration. Any problems encountered, suggestions to improve it.
Seems to me it is premature to state if it will be successful or not but looks like your on to a good thing.
I agree if it helps save some time which can be spent else where...like lesson planning Wink

then it's a good thing!

gordogringo · Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 159 Location: Tijuana

Jeez Zero get a life!!!!!!!!
This is a great idea!!!!You want to be self righteous go ahead.Using a computer for evals is time saving but is probably cheating to you so we will let you get to your typing and white out.A little business efficiency is just what is needed for this profession.Almost unheard of in the academic world.

The Dog Ate My Keitai · Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 67 Location: Japan

Here's my two bits:

My first year in Japan was spent teaching at a private English conversation school (eikaiwa). At least twice a year we had to write student evaluations for all our kids.

Because you teach so many of them, and only see them for 60 minutes a week, it's hard to actually develop any sort of relationship, let alone an environment where you know each student's personality. Some of the exceptionally good or bad students stick out. They're the easiest ones to write up something for, but many of the rest are middle-of-the-road, and nothing poignant comes to mind... There's only so many ways (and so many times) I can say, "<name> is a good student. He tries hard and speaks English fairly well.. Keep up the good work" before something starts getting unglued in my head...

It doesn't help matters any when the school administration dictates that *ALL* evaluations must be either positive, or have a positive spin put on mediocre ones... In other words, it's not even an honest evaluation... It's a "blowing sunshine up the parents' arse" session, so they enroll their kids next year and the school makes money. When that's the case, I DEFINITELY have zero problem using a tool like this one to produce evaluations.

I couldn't have even called myself a teacher, because I was merely a performing chimp, a cross between Mr. Rogers and the entire cast of Sesame Street. I'd hardly call it teaching as much as I'd call it "edutainment."

Now, I no longer have to worry about such evaluations as I work for the Japanese public school system. If I AM requested for any kind of evaluation, it's usually based on grades which are obtained via some form of testing or other grading rubric. If I WERE requested to come up with verbal comments to accompany the grades, once again, I think this tool would be wonderful. A teacher can't be expected to produce 40+ new, original comments on demand, and then repeat the process for all the other classes too. And don't think that the students (and their parents, many of which belong to the PTA) won't notice if each kid's eval. says the same thing, word-for-word.

When I attended Jr. (and Sr. High School) our report cards were computerized (we received a printout sheet) with our grades, and comments which came from a pre-written list, exactly like the one on esltool! There was the option to override in order to provide a more personal message, but this was not usually the case -- as for most students it was uneccessary.

So, is this tool cheating or shirking one's teaching duties? Absoultely not. I respect any teacher who sits in his office poring over evals and dreaming up original messages for each student, but I don't agree that this IS or even SHOULD BE the norm for all teachers...

jay-shi · Joined: 28 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

So far, in 8 months, there have been 10175 evaluations created on the site. 4883 anything goes, 3493 mostly positive and 1799 only positive.

People from these countries have visited esltool.com (ordered by pageviews):

South Korea, United States, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan, European Union, Great Britain, Turkey, Thailand, India, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, New Zealand, Belgium, Norway, Mexico, Spain, Malaysia, Netherlands, Vietnam, Sweden, Kuwait, Czech Republic, Italy, Russian Federation, Singapore, Indonesia, Brazil, Hungary, Morocco, Zambia, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Argentina, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, Trinidad and Tobago, Lithuania, Iran, South Africa, Guatemala, Switzerland, Slovak Republic, Cambodia.

Thanks to all of you who use esltool.com!