词汇大师-- Wanna, Gonna, Hafta

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

词汇大师-- Terms to Chew Over

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: Rosanne Skirble and I serve up a feast of idioms related to health and gluttony, as we present the classic children's fairy tale Hansel and Gretel -- retold by Slangman David Burke. MUSIC: Hansel and G

词汇大师-- He Shoots, He Scores

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: we answer a sports question. RS: A listener from Ivory Coast, Marius Meledje, would like to learn more about the language of basketball. This is a good week to answer that questio

词汇大师-- Grasping Roots as a Way

AA:I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: English teacher Nina Weinstein talks about building vocabulary by understanding root words. NINA WEINSTEIN: Basically half of all the words in the English language come from other

词汇大师-- Think 'Uh Huh' and 'Unh Unh' Sound Alike?

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: we talk with English teacher Nina Weinstein about some expressions in spoken American English that you might not find in a dictionary. RS: But if you are a good listener, you'll h

词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Gerunds vs. 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

词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Meet Two Young English Teachers

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: meet two young English teachers. One is from the United States, the other from Uzbekistan. RS: The American is a native English speaker who also speaks Arabic. He teaches a conver

词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Audience Mail

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: we answer some of your mail. RS: Listener Benny Kusman is from Indonesia, but tells us he is staying in Malaysia. Here is the first of his two questions: AA: If I have two books,

词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Gerunds vs. 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

词汇大师(Wordmaster)--'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

词汇大师--No Gunplay, Just Wordplay

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

词汇大师--When There Is 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

词汇大师--An 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

词汇大师-- Tribes in California

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

词汇大师-- Using Language Technology

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: an electronic tutoring system that helps non-native speakers of American English learn to pronounce words with a native accent. RS: The product is called NativeAccent. It's sold b

词汇大师-- 'For Good' or Offered '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

词汇大师-- In Choice of Immigration Terms

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

词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Pretentious Language

February 9, 2005 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: more junk English. RS: Back in 2001, we talked to writer Ken Smith about his book Junk English. In his words, Junk English is much more than sloppy grammar. Most

词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Emotion Words

February 16, 2005 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: words that express emotion. RS: Suppose someone gave you two minutes to write down as many different emotions as you could think of -- for example: happy, sad, a

词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Interview with an English Learner

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: an interview with one of our listeners in Iran. RS: Atefeh is a university student. She's studying English literature, so she reads a lot of classic books. But, like any young per