Socrative is a web-based student response system that can be used for several purposes in the English language classroom.

It can collect student responses to selected-response questions (multiple choice or true or false) and also to open answer questions. A correct answer can be set, along with feedback, but both things are optional. Therefore, Socrative quizzes can act as tests or just as response collectors.

Quizzes can combine different type of questions. Format and multimedia options are limited: bold, italics and pictures.

The platform can be used from a web browser or from an app. The web browser has two login areas, one for teachers and one for students. There are also two different apps, one for teachers and one for students.

Although this tool is mostly useful for activities inside the class, quizzes can be left running for an unlimited amount of time, so that students can finish or do them outside the classroom.

Socrative offers both instant and delayed feedback both to students and to teachers. When the quiz is running, students can see on their devices if they have answered correctly or not (unless no correct answer has been specified by the teacher). Once the quiz has finished, teachers can download a whole-class Excel spreadsheet with the class responses, an individual report for each student and a quiz report which includes the number of hits on each option and the short answers submitted.

Socrative can be used as a gamified quizzing tool, because it offers the “space race” delivery mode for quizzes. However, its gamification system is only based on correctness and speed. It does not include music, leaderboard, badges, messages on the students’ device. We could say it’s a “soft” approach to quiz gamification.

Teachers can choose if the quiz is student-paced with instant-feedback, student-paced with open navigation or teacher paced.