AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: a collection of life stories told in just six words. RS: But first, we have a report on a linguist in Virginia who collects accents from across America, and across the world, and...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER: an update on an Iranian listener. Rosanne Skirble and I spoke to her by phone early in 2005. RS: Well, what do you like about studying English? What is it, is it a ... ATEFEH: Oh, no, actually I love...

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...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we continue our discussion with dictionary editor Ben Zimmer about terms related to the presidential campaign. RS: One word that's being associated with John McCain -- or John McC...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: dictionary editor Ben Zimmer explains terms from the U.S. presidential campaign. RS: We start with battleground state and swing state. BEN ZIMMER: Well, they're usually used prett...

The Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial industry is the talk of Washington right now. But where exactly did the term bailout come from? In this special edition of Wordmaster, Avi Arditti and Rosanne Skirble turn to di...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we continue our discussion on an effort to improve writing in American schools. RS: Elyse Eidman-Aadahl is co-director of the federally-funded National Writing Project. ELYSE EIDM...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: encouraging high school students to write about the issues they want the next U.S. president to address. RS: That is the aim right now of the National Writing Project, a federally...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: how should a teacher handle controversial topics in the classroom? Rutgers University professor Barbara Lee gets asked that question all the time, as she recently did through an o...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more of our discussion of gesture language. RS: We don't mean formal sign language taught to deaf people, but the way we use our hands either with spoken language or in place of i...