英语单词大师：We're Americans

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: What to call the homeless of Hurricane Katrina? RS: Some have called them refugees. We asked Oxford English Dictionary consultant Ben Zimmer for a history of this word. BEN ZIMMER

英语单词大师：Literary Voice

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: the new TOEFL. RS: TOEFL is the Test of English as a Foreign Language. It's required by many colleges and universities in the United States and elsewhere as a measure of a student

英语单词大师：New TOEFL

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble. This week on Wordmaster: more about the redesigned Test of English as a Foreign Language from the Educational Testing Service. Over the coming year, the new TOEFL iBT -- or Internet-based test -- will replace

英语单词大师：Heritage Speakers

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster, Musa Nushi, a 27-year-old Iranian with a master's degree in English teaching from Tehran University. MUSA NUSHI: English is in high demand in Iran because lots of people are going

英语单词大师：Infinitives, Part 1

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: to be or not to be, or should there be an -ing? That is the question as we look at gerunds and infinitives. RS: To be, to run, to eat: the to indicates the infinitive form of the

英语单词大师：Infinitives, Part 2

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: more of our discussion of gerunds and infinitives with English teacher Lida Baker. RS: A gerund, remember, is a verb ending in -ing but used as a noun. An infinitive is a verb wit

英语单词大师：Language

The show business trade paper Variety turns 100 this year, and it continues to vex and amuse its readers with a language all its own. In this slanguage, as Variety staffers have dubbed it, media giant Disney is known as the Mouse, a reference to its

英语单词大师：Alabama, Part 2

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: more of our discussion of language in the American South. RS: We're talking with a woman in Alabama named Donna Akins. All she wanted was an answer to a grammar question. But we a

英语单词大师：Alabama, Part 1

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a lesson in regional English in the American South. RS: And to give you that lesson is a woman who wrote to us from Alabama named Donna Akins. Donna Akins is not an English teache

英语单词大师：Emotion in Words

Today on Wordmaster with Rosanne Skirble, the emotions behind the words we say. RS: Think of how many emotions our voices are able to convey. English teacher and Wordmaster contributor Lida Baker says meaning changes by modifying the tone of voice in

英语单词大师：Hawaiian Language

Today on Wordmaster, Rosanne Skirble takes us to a school in America's Pacific island state, Hawaii, where students are immersed in the Hawaiian language and culture. RS: Students at Anuenue (ah-new-new) Hawaiian Immersion School in Honolulu straddle

英语单词大师：Small Talk

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a conversation about small talk. RS: Our guest is Debra Fine, author of a new book called The Fine Art of Small Talk.DEBRA FINE: It is not the business conversation, not the busin

英语单词大师：Guide to Writing

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: some new elements in The Elements of Style.RS: The Elements of Style is a little book that for decades has served countless writers and editors. The two authors have long since pa

英语单词大师：Facinorous

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: Anu Garg, creator of the A.Word.A.Day Web site and author of a new book called Another Word A Day: An All-New Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English

英语单词大师：Matter Matters

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: the second part of our conversation with Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of American dictionaries for Oxford University Press. RS: We start by talking about the proper way to get to

英语单词大师：T Is for Trouble

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a pronunciation question from Quebec, Canada. RS: Nam-Thien Khuu writes by e-mail, I have heard [that the letter 't' is silent when it comes after a stressed syllable]. Am I right

英语单词大师：Happy Holidays

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: the paradox of a social greeting designed not to offend anyone that, by its very design, offends some people. RS: Next Sunday, most Americans will celebrate Christmas. This year,

英语单词大师：No Gunplay

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: palindromes aplenty! RS: A palindrome is something that reads the same backwards or forwards. Palindromes make us think of Janus, the Roman god with one face looking forward, anot

英语单词大师：Jump the Couch

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: closing the dictionary on some words of 2005. RS: Grant Barrett is project editor of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang at Oxford University Press. We talked to him last

英语单词大师：Self-Instruction

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: English teacher Lida Baker suggests five resolutions for people who want to improve their English in the New Year. LIDA BAKER: My first resolution that I would recommend people ma