AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: the founder of National Punctuation Day. RS: Sunday was the day for a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes and other proper uses of periods, semicolons and the ev...
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...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: linguist Walt Wolfram from North Carolina State University, a self-described dialect nomad who likes to wander through the dialects of American English. RS: And where has this nom...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: extremism by any other name. RS: The term Islamofascism, or Islamic fascists, has prompted some debate. We were curious how the term fascism originated and how political scientist...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: advice from a writing coach. RS: Jack Hart is a managing editor at The Oregonian newspaper in Portland. We talked to him last year about the classic writing guide by William Strun...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: going beyond the rules of grammar. RS: Diane Larsen-Freeman is director of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan. She believes grammar is better understood...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: sensing the meaning of words from their sound. A study in next week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores the connection. RS: Researchers studied...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble. This week on Wordmaster: English teacher Lida Baker joins us from Los Angeles to talk about authentic listening materials. RS: It's the subject of her latest textbook, called Real Talk 1. LIDA BAKER: One of t...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: happiness as defined by an economist. RS: For almost a year, economists at the University of Michigan have been asking Americans about their happiness for the school's widely quot...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: age and the economics of learning English. RS: Our guest is Hoyt Bleakley, an economist at the University of Chicago. He and Aimee Chin at the University of Houston have studied t...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti, Rosanne Skirble is away. With us this week on Wordmaster: Emily Kissner, a sixth-grade teacher in Pennsylvania and author of a new book called Summarizing, Paraphrasing and Retelling. EMILY KISSNER: When you summarize, you need t...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti, Rosanne Skirble is away -- this week on Wordmaster: meet a young English teacher from Morocco. LAHCEN TIGHOULA: My name is Lahcen Tighoula. I am a high school English teacher from the south of Morocco. I am from the city called A...
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...
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...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble and this week on Wordmaster: a report from NBC News that caught our attention. RS: It's about a word that is spreading like no other. (MUSIC) FEMALE: Like, I saw these guys who, like, were really cute. MALE: A...