Student Academic Progress Check

At American English Language School, we believe that monitoring a student's performance throughout their academic career here enables us to provide the best academic support and guidance. We value our students’ education and want to make sure that we offer them the best service that we can provide. By following our student academic progress check, teachers will know exactly how their students are doing and what they can do so that their students will improve.

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.
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AELS wants our students to be serious about their English learning. For this reason, we use a combination of reading materials so that students build their comprehension skills, allowing them to become better readers. Students will also start to pick up on the exemplary grammar they are seeing, and they will build their vocabulary. These two skills will help them to become better writers and speakers. In lower levels, students will focus on picture books and basic non-fiction that will help them develop their understanding of American culture. In higher levels, students will read more difficult current events so that they can begin looking at academic texts in Level 5. Twice a week (Mondays and Wednesdays), students will read new material and focus on a set of comprehension questions and vocabulary words for that text. They will then discuss the text and go over the associated questions/vocab together in class. Levels Basic-2 will complete the reading in class, while Levels 3-5 will often be asked to read on their own at home before discussing in class.
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Every week, our ESL students will have multiple opportunities to practice their writing skills. In addition to daily grammar and vocabulary practice, students will also write a response to a prompt on our online writing program on Tuesdays. These prompts might be related to the weekly topic or to a discussion students had about a specific reading or listening assignment. After students finish their "rough draft" on Tuesdays, the teacher will look at each one and provide individual feedback to help the student identify weak areas and guide him or her towards a solution. Students will also discuss their writing with each other to get some feedback from their peers as well. Providing feedback to other students helps each one practice their own grammar, speaking, and editing skills. For homework, the student can make changes to his or her writing to try to improve before submitting the "final draft" by Thursday morning. On Thursdays, the teacher will use colored corrections to fix any remaining errors and provide specific feedback to each student.
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Every week, our ESL students take a unit test on Fridays based on the lessons that they learn in class. Our teacher will grade the tests and then spend some time on Monday going over the test for problems that students encountered on the test or how they can improve on the next test. This enables students to understand why they got their answers wrong and what the correct answers were. This helps students realize what they are struggling and how they can fix it early so they can excel in the class.
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At American English Language School, we understand that our students want to be the best they can be which is why we have included assignments into our curriculum. Our weekly portfolio assignments included a writing assignment, a listening activity, and an activity project. Our writing assignments are based on our supplementary curriculum in which students have to write essays based on prompts from the unit lessons and grammar lessons. Our teachers will grade these assignments including comments on how they can improve for the next assignment. We also have a weekly listening activity based on the unit’s listening we go over in class where students will listen and fill in the blanks into a transcript of the listening. They do this in order to further test our students on the listening they have done in class. Students are also assigned weekly activity projects every Friday where they are asked to present on a topic from the unit every Monday during the first hour of class. This helps with their speaking and making sure that they understand every aspect of the unit from the week before. All of these projects allow our students to practice their English and allow our teachers to see their weekly progress. Teachers also write individualized comments every Friday based on their participation in class and their weekly assignments and tests. Teachers will comment on how the students are doing and what they can do to improve.
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