英语单词大师：Excuses

AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: Just in time for those unattainable New Years resolutions, the art -- and danger -- of making excuses. SCHLENKER: What excuses do is try to diminish personal responsibility.RS: Bar

英语单词大师：Teaching English in Syria

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: meet Safwan Abdulsalam Kadoora. He's the director of the English department at Karma. That's an English and French language center that opened in Damascus, Syria, in two thousand six. SAFWAN KADOORA: W

英语单词大师：When It Comes to Gesturing,

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more of our discussion of gesture language. RS: We don't mean formal sign language taught to deaf people, but the way we use our hands either with spoken language or in place of i

英语单词大师：Handling Sensitive Topics in

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: how should a teacher handle controversial topics in the classroom? Rutgers University professor Barbara Lee gets asked that question all the time, as she recently did through an o

英语单词大师：Between Hello and Goodbye,

MUSIC: Hanging on the Telephone/BlondieAA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: some tips on telephone etiquette. RS: One person you don't want to leave hanging on the phone is Nancy Friedman. She's been traveling the co

英语单词大师：Compounding Makes All the

AA: I'm Avi Arditti. Rosanne Skirble is away, but joining me from Los Angeles is English teacher Lida Baker to explain our topic on Wordmaster this week. It's a feature of the language called compounding. LIDA BAKER: Compounding is when we take two w

英语单词大师：What Aphorists Have to Say

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we continue our conversation with James Geary about his new book, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists.An aphorism is a philosophical saying whose author is known. Two yea

英语单词大师：Words of Comfort for an

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more advice about expressions of sympathy. RS: Last month, English teacher Lida Baker talked about things to say. Now we move on to writing. LIDA BAKER: I think if you're writing

英语单词大师：Want to Learn Some Slang

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Slangman revisited. RS: A listener from Libya, Radwan Al-karash, sent us an e-mail earlier this month: I enjoy listening to your interviews with different people from different co

英语单词大师：Forget 'Chicken' and 'Egg,'

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 c

英语单词大师：Wise Writing

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER, our guest is the author of a new book called On Words: Insight Into How Our Words Work -- and Don't.RS: Paula LaRocque has worked for many years as a writing instructor and newspa

英语单词大师：Hypercorrection

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- getting hyper about correctness. RS: English once had a system where nouns took different forms depending on whether they were the subject or the object of a sentence. We've los

英语单词大师：Saving the World

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster, our guest is Professor Rob Jackson, director of the Global Change Center at Duke University. He's with us to explain some of the language of ecology and climate change. RS: And we

英语单词大师：Ecology

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: more of our interview with Rob Jackson, director of the Global Change Center at Duke University with some terms you're likely to hear in the climate change debate. RS: We start wi

英语单词大师：Funniest Fed

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster, finding the right words to make people laugh. Meet Shahryar Rizvi. He's a computer specialist, also working part time on a master's of business administration. So what's he doing in a competition organ

英语单词大师：Pronunciation Rules

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: some pronunciation rules to help make your speech sound more natural. RS: Back with us from Los Angeles is Nina Weinstein, author of the English teaching book Whaddaya Say? Guided

英语单词大师：Quotations Change

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: our guest is Fred Shapiro, the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. RS: Six years in the works, this newly published book contains about thirteen thousand entries from all time

英语单词大师：'House' or 'Home'

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: using the Internet to help make sense of words that are closely related. RS: Like house and home, for example. Both describe a living situation. But house refers to the building,

英语单词大师：Wanna, Gonna

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: reduced forms in spoken American English. RS: We're talking about forms like whaddaya -- meaning what do you, as in whaddaya say? Whaddaya Say? is also the title of a popular teac

英语单词大师：English in Russia

I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: teaching English in Russia. (MUSIC)A lunchtime concert at Saint-Petersburg State University. Last month I had the opportunity to speak at two conferences -- one was a meeting of SPELTA, the St. Petersburg