Criterion Online Writing Evaluation for students

In my language school in Mongolia, the Criterion Online Writing Evaluation tool is used for iBT TOEFL preparation course to support the students' writing skills. This web-based writing tool has different kinds of topics for college level students and TOEFL and GRE preparers. Once students get registered and ordered the subscription, they can choose from variuos topic, write it and get the score ranges 4 to 6. Also it allows students to know what they need to work in the future and provides feedback on grammar, spelling, usage, organization, mechanics error and development of their writing. Teachers can comment on the essay written by students using instructors' account. From my experience, the students who wrote TOEFL topic essay at least 4 times using this tool improved their writing skills and increase their scores. It was really helpful for me and my students.

Here is the link you can go and get more information.
http://www.ets.org/criterion/about/

Cambridge English Teacher

I have been a member of Cambridge English Teacher for almost 2 years. Throughout the years, it has provided a plenty of news and useful information and techniques I can use in ESL and EFL settings. The membership fee is 40USD annually and it includes one free online certificate course related to teaching English methods and unlimited free webinars, consultant advices and articles. Every week I receive an email about free webinar schedules and can attend in the webinar and discussion forum. Last week, I attended in the webinar called " Motivating very young learners", which has a live video and a downloadable article. For me, it is beneficial to be a member. I hope you will like it.

Here is the link URL: http://www.cambridgeenglishteacher.org/

SurveyMonkey website as L2 teaching tool

This week, I learned about the website SurveyMonkey, which is an online survey development cloud based company. SurveyMonkey provides free, customizable surveys, data analysis, sample selection, bias elimination, and data representation tools. The website provides to create any type of survey with simple and easy-to-use survey builder.

The website is very simple and smart tool to create a real survey that can be used for all purpose, especially in education, business and marketing field. Therefore, using the website for a while, I am able to create my own survey and questionnaire. I think L2 teachers can use this website in two ways: first, they can create a real survey for their students to know their satisfaction and learning process. Second, it can be used as exercises and tests that teachers create online with multiple choice, dropdown, and comment box. Also, this tool is great to investigate the needs of students and current teaching situations of any teachers. There are 3 kinds of price offered to get services depending on additional tools.

1. ü  Basic free – 10 questions, 100 responses, standard email support
2. ü  Gold - $300 per year – unlimited questions and responses along with analyzing tools
3. ü  Platinum - $780 per year – with multiple users and phone support is added.