An online language school, from the placement test to the end-of-term report card
Your terms are short and your classes are small. What you sell is how much speaking time each student gets in that session. Zoora keeps the whole path of a term in one account, from the placement test and the live class to assignments, quizzes, and report cards, so the teacher's time stays on teaching.
What a language school wrestles with every term
- 1
Every term starts with a placement queue
We copy the placement sheet by hand, run the oral interview over the phone, and write the results into a spreadsheet. By week three we find out that two people are sitting in the wrong class. One is bored and one is lost, and neither of them may sign up for the next term.
- 2
My class of eight went online and turned into a lecture
In a classroom a student has no choice but to speak. Online everyone mutes, and at the end of the session we see that only the teacher talked. We charge for conversation, not for listening to one person.
- 3
The audio file in one place, the assignment in another, the grade in the teacher's notebook
Lesson audio gets lost among the group messages, assignments arrive in private chats, the speaking grade stays in the teacher's own notebook, and at the end of the term we have to put it all together by hand. And English text dropped into the middle of a Persian message comes out scrambled and hard to read.
- 4
Teachers are part-time and change from term to term
A good teacher works at several schools and may not be back next term. When one leaves, the class history, the assignments they collected, and the half-finished grades leave with them, and the replacement has to work out from scratch where the class is in the book.
One language term, from the placement test to the next level
The student's file, and their level
Import the enrollment list from an Excel file: users, classes, and each class's roster. You can build custom fields for your own school as well, such as Level as a dropdown from A1 to C2, or Language and Branch. Each person's level stays on their own profile, so you are not hunting for a separate file.
The online placement test
Create a Placement class and run the test right there, with a set duration and a different question and option order for each candidate. If you need to, you can also turn off going back to a previous question. The score is visible only to you until the test window closes, so the next candidate hears nothing from the one before.
A short oral interview
Book a short live session for each candidate. The interview score is recorded in a manual gradebook column, and the teacher's notes on pronunciation and fluency sit beside it in a text column.
Building classes by level
Create the class with a set capacity, say eight people, assign its teacher, and put the whole term's sessions on the calendar. To each session you add whatever it needs: a live room, an assignment, a quiz, or a lesson video.
A live session that has turns to speak
Everyone joins with mic and camera off. A student raises a hand to speak, the teacher sees the order of the raised hands and gives the mic to that person. A whiteboard, screen sharing, uploading the textbook PDF, and a poll in the middle of the lesson are all there too, and each person's time in the room is recorded on its own.
Homework between two sessions, audio included
Set the assignment with a submission window and attach the lesson file. The student types an answer or attaches a file, including an audio file recorded on their phone. The teacher writes a score and a comment, and that same score lands in the class gradebook.
Midterm and final
Questions are written once in the question bank and used again next term: short answer for grammar gap-fills, multiple choice for vocabulary, and open-ended for writing. The teacher grades the open-ended answers, and the similarity percentage against the model answer is only a hint. On higher plans AI gives a suggested score with a reason, but the teacher's score is never overwritten.
Report cards and the decision about next term
In the class gradebook the attendance, quiz, and assignment columns fill in on their own, and the teacher writes the speaking column. The report card is visible to the student too. Update their new level on their profile and send word that the next term is starting over Telegram, Bale, SMS, or a push notification.
What language schools get the most use out of
The turn to speak belongs to the teacher
The teacher sees the order of the raised hands, gives each student permission to speak when their turn comes, and then takes it back. Speaking time in the class is something the teacher decides, not something that happens by accident. What used to take one glance around the room is still within reach here.
Short answers that cope with English spelling
Define several correct answers for each blank. English capitalization makes no difference, and spaces and half-spaces are ignored as well, so a student does not lose a grammar point over one capital letter or one extra space.
The speaking grade is recorded where a multiple-choice test cannot reach
Zoora does not analyze audio and does not grade conversation. That is the teacher's work. But the class gradebook has a manual score column and a notes column, so speaking and pronunciation sit next to the written test score and are seen together at the end of the term.
Persian right to left, English left to right
The interface comes in Persian right to left and in English left to right, and each user picks their own language. Even a teacher who does not read Persian sees the same class in the English interface. In the messenger, each message's direction is worked out from its own text, so one English sentence in the middle of a Persian conversation does not come out scrambled.
Session recording for listening practice
The session is recorded and archived and stays for up to 365 days depending on the plan. A student who was absent catches up, and someone who wants to hear the accent and the sentence structures again listens to that same session a second time. The teacher does not have to repeat the lesson for one person.
Offline classes for listening material
Publish the lesson video or audio file in an offline room so students can watch and listen whenever they want. All of these files stay in the school's own dedicated storage, with usage in plain view.
Common questions from language schools
Zoora does not analyze a student's audio and does not grade it. Oral assessment is the teacher's work. What Zoora does is make a place to record it: run the interview or the presentation in a live session, or set an assignment where the student attaches an audio file. The teacher writes a score and a comment, and that same score lands in the class gradebook, next to the written test score.
No. Zoora does not have breakout rooms, and we would rather not promise and instead tell you what works in practice. Keep classes small and level-matched, and manage speaking turns by raising hands and handing over the mic. For pair work you can also create a separate live session with just those few people. If breakout rooms are the deciding factor for you, say so in the demo and we will be straight about where we stand today.
Attach the audio file to an assignment, or put it in that session's offline room so each student listens with their own headphones at their own quality. That usually turns out healthier than streaming live over a home internet connection. If you want to show a text or an image at the same time, screen sharing and PDF upload are there in the live room itself.
No. The class opens in a browser on a computer or a phone, and the video quality adjusts itself to the internet speed. The interface comes in Persian and English and each user switches their own language, so a teacher who does not read Persian can see the same class and the same gradebook in the English interface.
A few things run on the server and are certain. The order of the questions and options differs for each student, the question text arrives as a noisy image instead of as text, which means the English wording of a question cannot be copied and handed to a machine translator, and the duration and the deadline are yours to set. The rest is only a report: leaving the exam page, unusually fast answers, and several people signing in from one location get flagged, and you decide for yourself.
Run your next term on Zoora
Take a short demo and let us start with one of your own real classes: one placement test, one live session, and one audio assignment. If it works, we will move the rest of the term too.
09999931289Run your next class on Zoora
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