A Gift of English:The Life and Work of Peter Lai

However, few of his admirers realize that their popular English teacher achieved just 7% on his university entrance English examination, although he did eventually become a student of Fu Hsin Kang College, a military institute in Taipei. How is it that a person who nearly gave up English in his youth could overcome his difficulties and become such an admired teacher?

Put simply, Peter Lai's path to success was hard work. At one stage, he studied English non-stop for more than 10 hours every day. He even got up at night and hid in the school's pigpen ignoring the screeching of the pigs to recite his English aloud. His success is a model for anyone studying languages and confirms the wisdom that "there are no difficulties if you work hard."

For many years, Peter Lai and his American teachers have been meeting with their vast audience via the broadcast network, and have solved many of their listeners' English problems.

A difficult beginning

Lai Shih-hsiung's family was not particularly wealthy. His father was a master sergeant in the army, and the family's meager income made it difficult to raise their many children, so life was very hard. In order to supplement their income, they ran a number of small businesses such as grocery and noodle shops, and sold vegetables and sugar cane, but these small ventures did not earn much money. Lai was the eldest son in his family, so he had to help by selling and delivering noodles and washing dishes. Because he was so busy, he had very little spare time to study and nobody to help, so it was no wonder his academic results were less than brilliant. From time to time, he felt inferior and became something of a loner.

There were a number of events in his childhood years that caused him great unhappiness - even humiliation. One day after class, he was hurrying to deliver noodles to a wealthy family, so he didn't bother to change out of his school uniform. When the father of the family, a doctor, saw him delivering noodles to their home wearing school uniform, he called Lai in to meet his children. The young boy thought that he was going to be praised for being so capable at such a young age, but the doctor announced loudly to his children "If you do not study hard, you will be like him selling noodles after school!" Understandably, these words broke his heart. On the way home, he could not stop crying and swore that he would study hard to be successful so that he would not be ridiculed again, but afterward he soon forgot his oath. For a young teenager of 13 or 14, playing games was a much more attractive pastime than studying.

Peter Lai and his wife (center and second from left) cuddle their granddaughter in this photo with their family. Since the appearance of the third generation of the Lai family, Peter has become particularly interested in how to teach English to children.

An unexpected inspiration

During his high school years, Peter Lai was fascinated by Western songs and was working hard to improve his English. But because of his poor background in the language, he did not improve much and had problems remembering vocabulary. To add to his difficulties, he did not understand how to use the English phonetic symbols, so he had to mark each word with Mandarin phonetics. However, Lai comforted himself with the fact that he was not a native American speaker, so he didn't need perfectly "standard" pronunciation.

Because of his great interest in music - he played and sang in bands - he tended to neglect his studies when he was at high school. "I knew my English was really poor," he lamented, "and even though I wanted to study hard I didn't know how to go about it so I just gave up!" After failing the university entrance examination, he finally enrolled in media studies as a cadet at the military college.

In the early stages of military life, it was very difficult to adapt to an environment where there was little or no freedom and where the senior students treated the new recruits very harshly and often punished them. Young Lai had become used to his freedom, so life was terrible, and each day passed as if it were a year. He thought about running away many times, but didn't know where he could go. If he was arrested and court-martialled, it would be the worst thing possible! At this stage of helplessness, his fate was changed by a visit to the school by West Point military cadets from America.

At the time, diplomatic relations with the US were intact, so there was a close relationship between the militaries of the two countries, including an active student-exchange program. Under this system, American military cadets, accompanied by an interpreter, could visit the various classes in Taiwanese military colleges.

Wherever the West Point students visited, there was usually absolute silence as nobody dared to stand up to speak to the foreigners in English, despite the encouragement of the interpreter. Finally they came to the media department. While everyone as usual remained silent, suddenly one student in the class, Tsao Chin-hsi, the son of a government translator, stood up and spoke to the Americans in perfect English. His relaxed attitude and fluent speech stunned his classmates, including Lai, as nobody had suspected that their class contained such outstanding talent.

Ever since he was a young man, Lai has enjoyed western songs and has always been interested in setting up a band. In his rare moments of relaxation, he sometimes delights in playing the drums.

The beginning of a long road

Lai admired Tsao Chin-hsi enormously and at that moment in class, he decided to devote himself to studying English so that he too could show off his skills. In fact, this desire was the beginning of the young student's road to mastering English. He implored Tsao Chin-hsi to teach him. His classmate readily agreed to do so and went with him to choose a basic English conversation book.

Peter Lai was keen to improve his English as quickly as possible, but he became dejected after only a few days study. In addition, he was sometimes ridiculed because of his poor English in Bible-study class. He felt stupid and vowed to give up, turning to Japanese instead. At the same time, he was thinking about changing to the music department and setting up a band. However, he recalls that "shortly after, I decided to try English again, following Tsao's method: to see oneself as a baby and learn from the very beginning." Once again, it was the strong influence of Tsao Chin-hsi that helped him overcome his fear of failure and press on.

Lai realized that most people cannot speak English well because they are afraid of being ridiculed, so they dare not open their mouths: "The first condition for learning English is to have a good, thick skin!" After that revelation, he allowed nothing to stand in his way.

Washing cars for English

Firstly, on Sundays, he went to Tienmu, the Taipei suburb where most foreigners live, in order to learn Standard English from American soldiers. His idea was to make a deal to wash cars in exchange for English conversation. This move required a lot of courage and, in fact, most of the Americans ignored or rejected him at first. He went there regularly for four weeks and with luck, finally met an American soldier, Turnbull, who was willing to talk with him. Turnbull invited him in, and Lai, feeling very pleased, immediately put on his shorts and went to work on Turnbull's car. He washed it every week for a year.

At the same time, he also started to read widely. Opportunities and resources for learning English were few and far between in those days, so reading was an extremely important skill. Lai realized that it could not only improve his conversation abilities, but also introduced lots of new words and grammar. As the old Chinese saying goes: "If you can learn the Three Hundred Tang Dynasty Poems by heart, even though you cannot write poetry, you will be able to recite poetry." Lai always read out loud, because he realized that if you read only to yourself, it doesn't help you to speak. His main reading was a copy of the English-language edition of the Readers Digest. He read it every day and took regular notes.

With a dictionary by his side

Lai thinks that his English improved so quickly because of his meticulous system for taking notes. After checking his dictionary, for example, he wrote down not only the word, but also a complete sentence in order to remember the word and how to use it. He also wrote down all related words and their meanings. He was never satisfied until he had explored and understood a word completely. The young student spent one year finishing this one issue of the Readers Digest, and in this painstaking way, he built up a deep and solid foundation for his English.

In his third year at university, he started to learn translation. In those days, nobody worried too much about copyright, so he bought a second-hand English-language magazine and translated a number of short stories into Chinese, which he then sent to the family section of the Central Daily newspaper. After a number of tries, his work was finally accepted. The first payment was an encouraging NT$400, more than the small monthly allowance allowed him by the military, and so afterward he did more translation.

At this time, Lai was like a starving tiger looking for food, his particular food being language skills. So as not to drift apart from his classmates because of his study, he often spent time with them during breaks listening to their chatter and trying to translate their conversation into English on the spot. He always carried a dictionary, and when he heard a new word like "submarine" or "hypertension," he immediately looked it up. This habit became very useful for his later interpreting work.

Knowing how to learn is the key

During his four years of college life, Peter Lai strove under his self-imposed rule to "study English every day," and his abilities grew by leaps and bounds. However, because of this dedication and the fact that he often walked around speaking (English) to himself, his classmates gave him the nickname "Crazy Man."

His friend Tsao Chin-hsi eventually finished his doctorate and settled in the US. Recalling his time with Lai, Tsao remembered giving him a number of ideas that he accepted and carried out with his customary zest. "Many people wish to learn English well," Tsao says, "but they are often lazy and impatient. Lai was different. He would never give up before he achieved his aims." Tsao Chin-hsi himself was an outstanding English student because his father educated him from childhood. He commented that during college, he had helped many students with their English, but there were few like Lai Shih-hsiung, who was so wholehearted in his approach.

After Lai graduated, he served for two years as a platoon leader. Then, he gained admittance to a foreign language-training institute in the military and went on to another major stage in his studies. In the college, he was like a cat with the cream: reading, listening, writing, and speaking, all in English every day. If anyone spoke Chinese, they were fined. In this situation, his English improved incredibly quickly, and he graduated as top of the school. According to one teacher, Chang Wei-lin, Lai was the ideal student: highly motivated and incredibly enthusiastic. Chang believes that although there are no shortcuts to learning English, with intelligence and enthusiasm, a good student can achieve twice the result with half the effort. He thought that Lai was such a student: one who knew how to learn.

"I'm still learning!"

At 25 years of age, although Lai had never studied languages at a major university and had never been abroad to study, and even though he didn't start working hard until he entered Fu Hsin Kang College, he had already made the study of English his life's work, and he never stopped. As a result, his English abilities reached greater heights than those of even advanced, university-educated students.

In 1973, the Voice of Free China radio station was recruiting new English-language journalists. Many university and college graduates applied for these positions because of the very attractive salaries offered. In fact, more than 400 hopefuls sat for the examination, amongst them the children of ambassadors, graduates with master's degrees, and even the heads of university foreign language departments.

Lai had just graduated from foreign language school, and because of the excellent salary (up to NT$10,000), and also because he wanted to put his abilities to the test, he applied for a position. The examination was divided into an audition, a writing test and an interview. He passed the first two sections, and in the final part was competing with six others who were all graduates of the foreign language departments of well-known, even famous, universities. Before the interview, when they discovered that Lai was merely a graduate of a military college, they were dumbfounded and asked: "Can a soldier speak English?" Peter replied shyly: "I know only a little English, but I am learning."

Later, nobody could believe that this modest man was the only one offered a position, defeating some of the best language talent in Taiwan. Lai later said that this was the greatest honor of his life, but he had also recently passed another examination to study overseas at government expense, and was in fact preparing to study for a media and communications degree at the University of Minnesota in the US. Consequently, he never took up his position at the Voice of Free China.

During the two years in the US, Lai not only obtained a master's degree in media and communications, but somehow also managed another master's in English pedagogy. Originally, he had planned to study for his doctorate as well, but his wife developed a kidney problem, and her health was becoming worse, so he had to put an end to his studies and return to Taiwan. Because his wife's dialysis was extremely expensive, Lai had to do part time teaching after work in order to make ends meet. Finally, mainly for financial reasons, he retired from the military to teach English full-time.

Teaching through print and music

For his students, Peter Lai is an interesting and inventive tutor, full of wit and humor. He utilizes a variety of teaching techniques and can imitate a number of different English accents. As a result of these qualities, his classes are always packed. When he taught English in Merica TOEFL Institute, there were about 500 students in his class and seats were fully occupied an hour before the lesson began, so there was standing room only for latecomers.

In 1982, in order to teach English more widely, he established a magazine, Ivy League Analytical English, and also taught students who were preparing for university or college entrance examinations over the radio. He explained the structure of sentences, grammar points, vocabulary and how to complete fill-in-the-blanks exercises. In the beginning, the magazine had only a small circulation, so Lai had to be a jack of all trades; not only was he in charge of the academic input, but also developing a market for his publication, so his life was once again very busy. Fortunately, because of his popularity and reputation as an effective and interesting teacher, subscription numbers increased rapidly. At present, Ivy League Analytical English is the most popular magazine of its kind in Taiwan.

Lai has always been an admirer and collector of the Western pop songs that he loved as a high school student. He spent a year of his life translating many of these songs into Chinese, analyzing sentence structures, developing explanations of the grammar and printing the music for his readers, so they can learn English as they enjoy the songs. He says that while there are many ways of learning English, studying through music is one of the better. Audiences can come to appreciate and enjoy the meanings of the songs through an understanding of the structure of sentences and grammar. This method is much more gratifying, and therefore more efficient, than studying textbooks, and it has become one of his favorite techniques in recent years.

Changing, but staying the same

This year, Lai Shih-hsiung is 55 years old. He had been planning to retire, but he feels that he still has a weighty responsibility because of the recent upsurge in the number of people from all walks of life who want to learn English. Since January this year, he has been editing teaching material for Taiwan's English Proficiency Test in the hope that he will be able to help people at all levels to improve their English.

In addition, last year he became a grandfather, and as he witnessed his little granddaughter learning to speak, he realized the importance of building the basics of language abilities at an early age. While he is editing the material for the English Proficiency Test, he is also busy launching a new project aimed specifically at children. This new curriculum, with the friendly title of Peter's English, will hopefully provide the next generation with a sound foundation in the language.

Although Peter Lai's methods for gaining his mastery of the English language may appear diverse and unusual, they are based on a simple and unchanging principle. Today's society is a treasure-house full of rich resources for the study of English. It is there on radio and television and in magazines, but a student needs the conviction, courage and patience to work hard and take full advantage of these resources in order to succeed.