词汇大师--How to Get the Most From a Complaint Letter

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a lesson in complaining. RS: English teacher Lida Baker is with us from Los Angeles to discuss a topic suggested by one of our listeners, an English teacher in Iran. His students

词汇大师-- Advice Not 'Advices'

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: A listener, Akbar Gandi in Iran, is asking for an explanation of countable and uncountable nouns and the difference between a name and a noun. RS: English teacher Lida Baker has t

词汇大师-- A Classic Children's Story

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Our theme is food, or more precisely, slang having to do with food. So we're dusting off a vintage WORDMASTER: a segment we did with our old friend, David Burke, better known as S

词汇大师-- A Busy Shopping Day for Sure

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: With the national observance of Thanksgiving Day coming up this Thursday, we turn to a linguistic mystery about the day after, which traditionally opens the Christmas holiday shopping season in America

词汇大师-- 'Ms.' Has a Longer History

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: our language-hunting friend Ben Zimmer has been tracking the origin of the female title Ms., which, unlike Mrs. for a married woman and Miss for someone who's single, does not ind

词汇大师-- 'It's This or It's This'

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more of our conversation with Kelly Maxwell, co-director of the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan. The program centers on a class called Intergroup Dia

词汇大师-- To Catch On to Phrasal Verbs

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- English teacher Lida Baker joins us from Los Angeles to talk about phrasal verbs. RS: The first word is a verb. The second word, sometimes even a third, is usually a preposition

词汇大师-- Remembering 2008 in a Word

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER: we check in with Grant Barrett at the American Dialect Society for the results of its 19th annual vote for words of the year, in this case for 2008. GRANT BARRETT: The Word of the Year was bailout --

词汇大师-- Knowing the Lingo as Americans

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: dictionary editor Ben Zimmer explains terms from the U.S. presidential campaign. RS: We start with battleground state and swing state. BEN ZIMMER: Well, they're usually used prett

词汇大师-- To Be a Good Teacher

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER: an update on an Iranian listener. Rosanne Skirble and I spoke to her by phone early in 2005. RS: Well, what do you like about studying English? What is it, is it a ... ATEFEH: Oh, no, actually I love

词汇大师-- An English Professor

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: we're going to repeat a segment from two thousand two. It was an interview with an English professor who, after going blind, devoted his time to making the Internet more accessible. As it turned out, t

词汇大师-- 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

词汇大师-- Annotation and Other Tips

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we talk more with English teacher Maria Spelleri about how to get the most out of college textbooks for English language learners. RS: Should the student be looking up every word

词汇大师-- Take a Deep Breath

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: English teacher Nina Weinstein joins us from Los Angeles for an oral presentation about oral presentations. NINA WEINSTEIN: You know, some people will tell you, well, don't be ner

词汇大师-- Trying to Get a Grip on Gestures?

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: the language of non-verbal communication. Two writers, Melissa Wagner and Nancy Armstrong, have put together a book of one hundred eight gestures and their various, and sometimes

词汇大师-- How to Reduce an Accent?

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we answer a listener in the Philippines named Arnel Camba. ARNEL CAMBA: I am an online English teacher and I just want to know what are the different techniques or different strat

词汇大师-- Check Out Some of the Most Common Slang

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Slang that's not necessarily slang. RS: A. C. Kemp teaches international students as a lecturer in English language studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also

词汇大师-- Hypercorrection Is Not Simply Being Fussy

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

词汇大师-- How a Handshake Can Say a Lot About You

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, Rosanne Skirble is away. This week on WORDMASTER, English teacher Nina Weinstein joins me from Los Angeles to discuss business communication in America, including body language -- like the importance of a firm handshake. Business

词汇大师-- An Introduction to the World of Greetings

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we say hello again to English teacher Lida Baker in Los Angeles to talk about greetings in America. AA: So now typically, if someone says 'how are you doing?' RS: Yeah, typically