词汇大师--Writing Laws So Lawyers Are Not the Only Ones

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Our guest is David Marcello, executive director of the Public Law Center, a joint program of the Tulane and Loyola law schools in New Orleans. RS: For about 20 years now, the cent

词汇大师--Seriously: 'OK' Began as a Joke 2

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: We're back with the author of the new book OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word. RS: Last week, Allan Metcalf explained how OK began as a joke on March 23, 1839. Th

词汇大师-- Why Handwriting and Spelling Drills

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: We're back with Virginia Berninger, an educational psychology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. RS: A study she and her colleagues did found that children in f

词汇大师--A Valentine's Day Test

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: With Valentine's Day coming up this Sunday, we have a subject to set the mood. It's an interview we did a few years ago with the author of The Joy of Text. RS: Kristina Grish base

词汇大师-- 'How Are Yinz Doin?' Pittsburghers Ask

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we discuss a local dialect spoken in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the host city for this week's Group of 20 economic summit. That's Rosanne's hometown, and she went back in 2000 to t

词汇大师-- the Most Important Part of Being Cherokee

In 1838, the Cherokee Indians were forced to give up their land in the eastern United States and migrate to what is now Oklahoma. Over 4,000 died on the journey known as the Trail of Tears, but some Cherokee remained behind, hidden in the mountains o

词汇大师-- Getting a Read on World Happiness

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: using bloggers as a measure of the world's happiness. How does that add up? Just ask Chris Danforth, an applied mathematician at the University of Vermont. CHRIS DANFORTH: A colle

词汇大师-- More to a 'Buck' and Less to a 'Bromance'

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: we talk with Pam Munro, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, about the latest slang on campus. It's in U.C.L.A. Slang, a dictionary that she and her students have publi

词汇大师-- Smoothing Out English With Help From Sentence

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

词汇大师-- Recession Spawns an Expanding Lexicon

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: terms from the recession. Dictionary editor Ben Zimmer is back with us. And it sounds like he's going to start with a popular term these days, shovel-ready. (Sound of shoveling) B

词汇大师-- Words of Comfort for an Unfortunate Event

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

词汇大师-- The Legal Language of Love for Couples

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: What does prenup mean? That's a question from listener Muhammad Ali in Karachi, Pakistan. RS: A prenup is a prenuptial agreement, a contract between two people before they marry a

词汇大师-- What Difference Does a Preposition Make

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: prepositions for the perplexed. RS: The other day, our colleague Julie Taboh told us about a friend of hers, a non-native English speaker. It seems he once tried to tell someone t

词汇大师-- Step Two in Writing a College Essay

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more advice about writing a personal statement for an American college or university. Rachel Toor is the author of Admissions Confidential: An Insider's Account of the Elite Colle

词汇大师-- US Campaign Offers Lesson for an English Teach

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: another in a series of chats from the recent TESOL, or Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, convention in New York. AZADEH LEONARD: My name is Azadeh Leonard and I teach English at the C

词汇大师-- Showing Students That Good Writing Matters

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a teaching method that emphasizes writing not only in English classes but also in other disciplines. RS: It's called writing across the curriculum, and it's an old idea, but one t

词汇大师-- Sprinkling a Few Prepositions Into Speech

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: more about business communication. We talked a couple of weeks ago about the value of a firm handshake and how it's okay to just say your name and nice to meet you when you're introducing yourself. Tod

词汇大师--Its a Good Idea to Be Careful When You Write

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Charles Harrington Elster, author of The Accidents of Style: Good Advice on How Not to Write Badly. RS: It's full of examples, such as this common error. CHARLES ELSTER: What you

词汇大师--Language From the Sea

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- the catch of the day, terms from the sea. Lots of nautical expressions have washed ashore into everyday English. Alan Hartley researches them for the Oxford English Dictionary

词汇大师--Words and Debates Change With Time

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is more than two centuries old. Americans still talk about it a lot, but what exactly is it? RS: We asked American University law prof