ESL writing placement that keeps up with your students.
TeachLex places, grades and tracks ESL writing against the CEFR.
- Identify your students’ writing level
- Highlight strengths and weaknesses
- Grade writing and tests faster, with suggestions you review
- Track your students’ progress with precision
Most teachers are working from a guess.
A placement test at the start of the year, a final exam at the end, and very little in between. Every decision about materials, pace and grouping rests on a result that is months out of date.
You don’t actually know each student’s level.
Most placement tests are multiple choice. They never ask the student to write a sentence, so the level on the class list says little about what that student can actually produce.
Progress is invisible until the final test.
A student can stay at A2 all term without anyone noticing. By the time the final exam shows it, the term is over and there is no time left to act.
Marking writing by hand is slow, so students get little of it.
Forty essays against a rubric is an evening’s work. So writing is set less often, and the skill that shows a learner’s level most clearly is the one teachers see least of.
Set the writing. TeachLex suggests the grade and reads the level.
Students write inside TeachLex. Each piece comes back with a suggested grade against your rubric and a level on four CEFR dimensions. You review, change anything, and release. Four steps, one running record.
See the full walkthrough →Grade your tests in the same place.
Build a test from your own materials, assign it to a class, and the marking is ready for you to review when students finish.
See how tests work →Build a test from your materials
Choose the sections and question types, then edit the draft before you assign it. Everything from multiple choice to essays.
Objective items are marked instantly
Multiple choice, true or false, word match, fill the gap, sentence reorder and error correction are marked the moment a student submits. Objective grading never uses credits.
Written answers come with suggested grades
Short answers and essays come back with a suggested grade and feedback. Anything uncertain is flagged for your review, and nothing reaches a student until you release it.
What a level report looks like
This is what you open for a student. The grid explains the estimate dimension by dimension; every piece underneath carries the sentences the reading was taken from.
Why B1
| Dimension | Personal response Piece 1 · Wk 2 | Personal narrative Piece 2 · Wk 6 | Opinion essay Piece 3 · Wk 9 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Task achievement | B1 | B1 | B1 |
| Organization and cohesion | B1 | B1 | B1 |
| Lexical resource | A2 | A2 | B1 |
| Grammatical range and accuracy | A2 | A2 | A2 |
| Piece level | A2 | A2 | B1 |
Reading the grid. Task achievement and organization reached B1 by the second piece. Lexical resource moved to B1 in the most recent piece, which is what lifted the profile. Grammatical range and accuracy is A2 in every assessed piece and is the dimension to teach next.
Pieces
Write about a person who changed the way you think about something. What changed?
A person who changed how I think is my grandfather. He is a rice farmer in Niigata and he is almost eighty years old. When I was small I thought farming is boring and old work. But last summer I helped him for two weeks and I understood that that work is very important. Every morning he wakes at four and checks the water in the fields. He teached me how to see the sky and know the weather. He never gets angry when the rain disapoint him. He says, “The rice does not hurry, so why do you hurry?” Now when I feel stress about exams I remember his words. I think farming is not old work. It is important work and my grandfather is a important person for me.
This writing sits at A2 to B1 overall, with a clear personal story but simple, repeated vocabulary and some shaky grammar like ‘teached’ and ‘a important’.
The writer explains why the person matters, gives a concrete example from last summer, and connects it to their own life now. The purpose is clear and mostly developed, though the closing repeats the opening rather than adding a point.
Ideas move in a logical order, from introducing the person, to the summer, to the lesson learned. ‘But’ and ‘Now’ mark the turns, but there is no paragraph break to separate the story from the reflection.
Mostly simple, common words like ‘old’, ‘work’ and ‘important’, which limits precision. ‘Important’ appears four times and ‘work’ five, showing a narrow range rather than varied vocabulary.
Basic sentence patterns are controlled, but errors appear in verb forms (‘teached’, ‘disapoint’), the article in ‘a important’, and tense in ‘thought farming is’. They do not block meaning but show shaky control of longer sentences.
Where does each student sit in the class?
Every student in the class appears on each line, placed within their level rather than at its center, so a student near the upper edge of a band is heading for the next one. Pick a student to see them against the rest.
Rin is at target. Grammar sits with the A2 group on its line while everything else is B1, so that one dimension is where the next lesson lands.
What your students see
Their level. Their teacher’s feedback, released only when their teacher is ready. The grammar patterns to practice, quoted from their own sentences. No comparison with anyone else: the class view above is yours, not theirs.
- Nothing reaches a student until you release it.
- Every level is a suggestion until a teacher confirms it.
- Student work is never used to train AI models.
- Levels are estimated on each student’s own work. The class view sets them side by side; it does not adjust them.
Simple plans for teachers and schools
Annual pricing shown. Level placement is on every plan, including Free. Paid plans carry 40 students per class, Japan’s legal maximum, so a real class always fits.
Objective grading never uses credits.
Get your invitation before launch.
TeachLex opens to a small group of teachers first. Leave your email and your invitation will arrive before public launch.
No credit card. One email when your invitation is ready.
An estimate appears after the first piece and firms up with each one. Three pieces give a level you can plan around; the report always says how many it rests on.
Yes, on every piece. The level and the feedback are suggestions until you release them.
No. Teachers and institutions pay. Students join with a code and use it free.