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, while "home" is more an emotional concept.

AA: There is an old saying that goes: "Home is where the heart is." There is another that says: "A woman's place is in the home." We don't hear that one much anymore. Nowadays what we hear is: "A woman's place is in the House" - that is the U.S. House of Representatives, with its first female speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

RS: With us from Los Angeles is English teacher Lida Baker¹, who says that some online resources can help clear up confusion over words. One of her favorites is the Web site OneLook.com, which offers definitions and translations from multiple dictionaries.

LIDA BAKER: "And it's very nice to have this list of dictionaries, because different dictionaries give different types of information. I think a lot of times people think that a dictionary, you know, it just -- a dictionary is where you go when you want to know how to say the word 'home' in a different language. That's a bilingual dictionary. But if you go to an English-English dictionary, it can give you a huge amount of information about the proper way to use a word.

"So what students need to look for when they're using online dictionaries, or any dictionaries, is the usage notes: How do we use these words? In what context? Is there an emotional sense that the word conveys? And that's what we mean by the word 'connotation': does it have a positive or a negative meaning?

AA: Lida Baker says another good online source is the Web site WordReference.com.

AUDIO: CUT 2LIDA BAKER: "And this is actually a site where people can send intheir questions about English words or grammar and receive a reply from other people who are on this list. And I typed in -- I went to [gm99nd] and I typed in house versus² home and it took me to this site called WordReference and the very first thing that I saw on that page was a letter from someone who wrote, 'Hello, what are the differences between these two words: home/house. Do they always mean the same? When should I use them?' And what followed this introductory question was a whole series of replies from other people who are using this list."RS: "What are some exercises that can be done in an ESL ]English as a Second Language] classroom to practice some of these search techniques that you've been discussing?"LIDA BAKER: "Well, let me give you an example of something that just happened yesterday. I was visiting somebody else's class. The class was doing a lesson on the comparative form of adjectives: long/longer, happy/happier and so on. And the adjective friendly came up, and the textbook said that the comparative form of friendly was friendlier. But somebody in the class said, 'Well, I've heard people say more friendly.' And the teacher stopped and thought about this for a moment and she said, 'You know what? They're both right.'

"So, it was a very informal class and it was OK for me to participate, so I said, 'Would you like me to do a [gm99nd] search and see which one is used more frequently?' And I did -- and, by the way, I found two million seven hundred ten hits for friendlier, but only one million eighty thousand hits for 'more friendly.' So, clearly, friendlier is the more common way to form the comparative. My point is that if you have a computer in your classroom, when students ask questions like this, you can get the answer on the spot. So you can send the student to the computer and have them do it themselves."AA: Lida Baker is an English teacher in Los Angeles. Her newest book, co-authored with Judy Tanka, is called "Real Talk: Authentic³ English in Context."RS: And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected]. And you can get more English teaching ideas at our Web site: voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

1 baker   

n.面包师

参考例句：

• The baker bakes his bread in the bakery.面包师在面包房内烤面包。
• The baker frosted the cake with a mixture of sugar and whites of eggs.面包师在蛋糕上撒了一层白糖和蛋清的混合料。

2 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

3 authentic   

a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的

参考例句：

• This is an authentic news report. We can depend on it. 这是篇可靠的新闻报道, 我们相信它。
• Autumn is also the authentic season of renewal. 秋天才是真正的除旧布新的季节。