AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- the language of persuasion, from an expert. RS: Eric Knowles is a social psychologist at the University of Arkansas. He heads a laboratory group that recently held a Symposium on...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- advice for battling weasels of a wordy sort. RS: Weasels are small, nasty animals. Their reputation gives us slang expressions like weasel words -- language thats deceptive or ev...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- with the remodeling of the VOA News Now schedule, our thoughts turn to construction-related slang. Or, more precisely, words related to construction that have other meanings in s...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Has the word minority outgrown its usefulness? RS: Minority means less than half. In the United States, members of non-European racial and ethnic groups are generally referred to a...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER -- help for English learners who have trouble pronouncing words with the letters t-h. RS: Our friend Lida Baker joins us with a pronunciation lesson. She writes textbooks for Englis...
INTRO: As long has language has existed, it has been in a constant state of change, and as long there have been dictionaries lexicographers have been trying to keep up with those changes. James Donahower reports on the flood of new words entering the...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER with spring time approaching here in the United States our thoughts turn to bird watching. RS: Birds are easy to spot in everyday speech. A hierarchy in an organization is called a...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER -- the language of electronic mail. TAPE: CUT ONE -- NAOMI BARONAs e-mail is developing more and more users, its also developing more and more styles. Theres one style that says be...
A: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble and, now that the Olympics are over, were back with WORDMASTER. This week -- going for gold in using the dictionary! RS: We looked up our friend Lida Baker. She teaches in the American Language Center at the Uni...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER -- a look backward! RS: As we do each New Year, were going to play one of our favorite recordings. Its a skit about a cowboy with an unusual speaking habit. AA: The piece is called...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER -- wishing you good health over the holidays, with Slangman David Burke. RS: Once again, just for our listeners, Slangman David Burke has rewritten a popular childrens fairy tale to...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER -- we talk about Junk English.RS: Thats the title of a new book. Author Ken Smith spent six months immersing himself in the language of popular culture. He found a lot of it junk, i...
AA: Im Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER -- we take some of the stress out of learning which words to stress in American English. RS: We turn to Lida [lee-da] Baker. Shes an instructor at the American Language Center at th...
AA: Im Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER -- whats it like to be an English teacher in America today? I put that question to an expert at the recent convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, in Baltimore, Maryland. Meet Carol J...
AA: Im Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER -- a visit to Baltimore, Maryland, for the ninety-first annual convention of N-C-T-E -- the National Council of Teachers of English. These teachers take American kids through reading and writing, speaki...