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

英语单词大师：Learners in U.S.

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: new standards for English learners in American public schools. RS: One in nine public school students is a non-native English speaker; in twenty years, it could be one in four. Th

英语单词大师：Bad News

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: giving doctors better skills to communicate bad news. RS: Anthony Back [pronounced like Bach] is a medical oncologist at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cance

英语单词大师：English Learner

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: we answer some listener mail. RS: Faisal in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is stuck in traffic -- traffic terminology, that is. Faisal is taking an English course. It seems that one day, many

英语单词大师：'You're Wearing

I'm Nancy Beardsley, filling in for Avi Arditti and Rosanne Skirble. This week on Wordmaster we'll talk about communication -- and miscommunication -- between mothers and daughters. Our guest is Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics pro

英语单词大师：Stagecraft

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: acting like an actor to improve your memory. RS: Our guest is Tony Noice, an actor, director, teacher and cognitive researcher - someone who studies how we think. He and his psych

英语单词大师：Broadway

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a track from the original Broadway cast recording of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. RS: The show is a musical satire of spelling competitions and the pressure to go t

英语单词大师：Not the Actor

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: what to call people who are in the United States without following immigration laws. RS: Sometimes they are called undocumented immigrants or undocumented workers or illegal alien

英语单词大师：On a Plate

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: we answer some listener questions. RS: Starting with this one from Rajpal Rawal in India, who sends us two sentences with questions about pronunciation -- more specifically, about

英语单词大师：Forget Chicken

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: English teacher Lida Baker explains the use of the words after and before. LIDA BAKER: I'm going to say a few sentences and I just want you to tell me two things: Is the sentence

英语单词大师：Lost for Words

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER some ways to help you improve your memory. ELDH: We don't forget, we just haven't learned it in the first place. RS: That's Wendi Eldh. She's a communications trainer who teaches m

英语单词大师：The Thing

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: the language of Hurricane Katrina. RS: Debra Howell is an artist who has lived in New Orleans on and off since the late 1960s. She says she never evacuated for a hurricane before

英语单词大师：American Dialects

More than half of the over one hundred native California tongues have disappeared. Many others have only a few, aging speakers. When this last fluent generation dies, languages spoken by Californians over centuries, will also die. At a recent gatheri

英语单词大师：Concise & Precise

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: some advice about writing. RS: For the past 18 years, Jim Allan has run a secretarial center in Los Angeles. He offers typing -- and a lot more. He draws on his background as a co