What's the level of Studio Classroom?
Studio Classroom is meant for intermediate students of English. The magazine is divided into three levels: low, medium and high. Readers need about a 1,500-word vocabulary to understand low -level articles. To understand high-level articles, readers need to have at least a 3,000-word vocabulary.
Who should study Studio Classroom?
Intermediate English learners, or anyone who is interested in improving their English ability. Students learn useful words and phrases as well as idioms and cultural information to help them talk to Westerners.
Why doesn't Studio Classroom get progressively harder throughout the year?
We are always getting new readers and listeners, so we keep the level of the magazine about the same. Within each issue, you will find low, medium and high level lessons.
I sent in a response to your Speak Up question, why wasn't it published in the Studio Classroom magazine or on your Feedback page?
We are sorry, but due to the numerous responses received we cannot print them all. We do really appreciate the effort and consideration of everyone who writes to us. Thank you.
Why doesn't Studio Classroom follow along with my school textbook?
A number of our readers and listeners are students, but many aren't. We want to be sure our lessons appeal to a wide audience and meet their needs.
What is the educational philosophy of Studio Classroom magazine?
We believe that readers learn better and faster when they are learning something they are interested in. For that reason, we put a variety of topics in Studio Classroom, to interest as many learners as possible. Our magazine format allows us to cover fresh, up-to-date topics that are new and of current interest each month. We also believe that readers can learn more language from material that is written naturally about a topic than from "contrived" material that is written to teach one specific grammatical structure.
How do Studio Classroom writers decide what to write about?
We choose topics we believe will be interesting to a wide audience. A range of topics allows us to introduce a wide variety of useful vocabulary words. Once the topics are selected, our writers decide what they want to say about a topic. They often discuss with each other what students will be most interested in knowing and what aspects of a topic will be most useful to students. We also choose topics that not only teach English to students, but also encourage them to be better people.
Why doesn't Studio Classroom write more about people or places close to my part of the world?
We appreciate the topic suggestions we get from listeners. But we usually try to keep a broad, international focus when choosing article topics. Our readers and listeners follow us from all over the world! One month we may have a travel story from China, and another month we may introduce a native culture from Africa. Keep reading -- we're sure you'll find interesting, useful material in our magazines each month.
Why doesn't Studio Classroom teach lots of slang or informal language?
Although these things are fun to learn, students do not know when to use these expressions--and when not to use them. As a result, they could embarrass themselves. We want students to be confident that the English they learn in Studio Classroom is useful and proper in any situation.
I'm currently studying Studio Classroom. How will I know when I am ready for Advanced?
This is a hard question to answer. Every learner is different. Some learn faster, some slower. Moving on to Advanced depends on you and your learning speed. It also depends on how much time you spend learning English. If you spend an hour a day, you will usually learn faster than if you spend only 10 minutes a day. If you study hard with Studio Classroom for a year, you should be able to start understanding the easy level articles in Advanced. As you start listening to Advanced radio, continue to listen to Studio Classroom for another year. After two years, you should be able to understand many of the articles in Advanced.