Former Chiayi expat writes book all about, um, ‘Um’

Born in Texas, the 39-year-old Erard was raised in Colorado and New Hampshire. “I went to college in Massachusetts, spent a year in Colombia in South America, then taught English in the Chiayi area for two years from 1990-1992,’” the American author said in a recent e-mail.

When asked if he still keeps in touch with people he met in Taiwan, Erard said that while he has not been back to Taiwan since he left in 1992, “I’ve made friends with many Taiwanese people here in America over the years, so I get to revisit ‘dou hua’ and dried plums from time to time.”

When asked if his new book might be useful to English teachers in Taiwan, Erard replied: “I think a teacher of English in Taiwan could use my book to figure out ways to teach students a range of options for being disfluent. Not that they would be teaching them to speak badly, but that they’d be teaching them to speak in real time. Native speakers of English fall into two groups, roughly: there are the ones who say ‘um’ a lot, rarely repeat words and restart sentences, then there are those who don’t say uh and um as much, but repeat words and restart sentences. Each individual person has his or her own baseline, their own style for speaking in real time, and teachers could have fun bringing students to realizing what their individual English style is.”

Published in English by a major book company in New York, Erard’s book will be translated into Chinese for a Taipei publisher later, according to publishing sources. When that happens, the former Chiayi teacher will see his work appreciated by residents of the island he once called home.

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