Written by Elena Fanaberova (edited by Swarajit Das)
Introduction
This was a particularly educational meeting with an extended prepared speeches section. We had a special guest from Holborn Speakers, Freddie Daniels, who treated us to an Educational Speech on evaluation tips as well as playing the General Evaluator’s role.
The meeting was opened by Club President Glen Long who welcomed new guests, returning guests, regular members and the club committee. He encouraged new members and guests to be brave and to take the plunge and “just do it”, which over time would help them to lose some of their nervousness.
The Toastmaster of the evening, who guided us through the slightly different speech agenda to a typical meeting, was VP of Membership and Mentoring Hari Kalymnios. Hari was assisted by the Timekeeper Jo Higham, who did this role for the first time, and the club’s Past President Nazia Soon who succinctly explained her role as Harkmaster for the evening.
Prepared speeches
During this part of the meeting several members usually present their speeches based on the Competent Communication (CC) Manual, but this evening in addition to two such speeches we had an extended Impromptu Speech and an Educational Speech as well.
The first speaker this evening was Neil Ward with his entertaining No. 3 speech from the CC Manual entitled “Where I Go to Relax”. Neil told us that he likes to relax in St. James Park in London where you can meet many different and sometimes unexpected animals including squirrels, various kinds of geese, swans and so on. We were even involved in a social experiment that Neil had built in to his speech.
The second speaker was Joe Lake, who presented his No. 5 speech from the CC Manual entitled “The Bark Is Often Worse than the Bite”. We heard Joe’s wise and personal story about his fear of a dog and how he coped with it when he was a paper boy. Joe argued that things look bigger and scarier in our minds than they are in reality, believing that irrational fear comes through stereotypes developed by media and people we spend time with. In the conclusion of his speech Joe encouraged people to be careful and selective about who they spend time with as well as what they read and watch.
The next speaker was club VP of Education Femi Asaolu with an impromptu seven-minute speech on a topic chosen by the audience – “Space”. He started with a humorous quote suggesting that dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space programme! Femi proposed that to survive we need to change continuously and look for expansion into space, for example to Mars.
The last speaker was Freddie Daniels with his Educational Speech entitled “Tips on Evaluating”. The main three tips for evaluating were: to provide motivation, encouragement and confidence to speaker; to bring the evaluation in on time; and to make a point on structure, content and delivery. An extra bonus tip from Freddie – evaluate everyone in a meeting even if you’re not the assigned evaluator – because this is the best way to improve.
Speech evaluations
After the break, Hari moved on to the evaluations part of the meeting, where other members of the club took to the stage and gave their own thoughts on one of the preceding speeches in order to highlight good practice and make recommendations on how the speakers might improve in future.
The first evaluator and relatively new member Ann Connolly evaluated Neil’s No. 3 speech. She reminded everyone that the aim was to create a speech that had a general and specific purpose and organise it so that the audience can follow the speech and be engaged with it. Ann commented that Neil did very well in these respects and was very warm and sincere. The main recommendation she made was to link the speech title with the beginning of the speech for a more effective opening.
The second evaluator was Joyanta Raksmith, who evaluated Joe’s No. 5 speech. Joyanta emphasised Joe’s excellent speech structure and brilliant wrapping up. The recommendation was to be more energetic at certain points in the content.
The last evaluator, club Secretary Kate Osborne, evaluated Femi’s fantastic off-the-cuff speech. Kate commented that she liked Femi’s delivery style: confidence, effective hand gestures and a big smile! She also pointed out strong areas in the structure of the speech: the use of the quote and humour in the beginning, the development of his argument in the middle part and the conclusion – all had kept the audience engaged throughout. Kate’s main recommendation was for Femi to stick to his chosen points and to not allow the speech to deviate too much from them.
Table Topics
It is our aim during the meeting that everyone has a chance to speak and the Table Topics section is one part which ensures this. Participating in Table Topics is great practice for both new and experienced members as well as brave guest volunteers.
The Topics Master of the evening was AG who took on the role for the first time. She prepared a theme for the session entitled “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
She asked the speakers to imagine themselves as children again and to tell why they wanted to have a certain career when they “grew up”. Careers included:
- a chef
- a football player
- a banker
- an archaeologist
- a doctor
- an accountant
Six people including some guests tackled AG’s questions on the spot and got some great experience of impromptu speaking.
The Table Topics evaluator this evening was Babur Yusupov, who evaluated each participant. He noted that the speakers used a lot of humour, applied the recommended 1-2-3 structure of a speech, gave personal stories and showed a deep knowledge of a subject they had just been given.
To round off the meeting, Harkmaster Nazia tested the audience’s listening skills with a set of quick-fire questions based on what they’d heard during the meeting and rewarded correct answers with sweets.
As the General Evaluator Freddie gave feedback to all the meeting participants who were yet to be evaluated. Some common and useful recommendations were: using examples and keeping no more than four to five points which can help the audience to better understand a speech evaluation and trying to exclude ‘filler’ words and phrases like “you know”. A useful recommendation for evaluators was to talk about a speech or a speaker and not directly to a speaker, to help the rest of the audience feel included.
Awards
Closing the meeting, Glen gave out the awards based on the votes cast during the evening and one President’s discretional award.
The Best Evaluator award went to Kate for her very detailed evaluation of Femi’s impromptu speech, the Best Table Topics speaker award went to Adam Horne for his well structured topic about wanting to be a chef and the highly coveted Best Speaker award went to Joe for his excellent prepared speech. The President’s discretional award went to a guest Johnnie for his very impressive Table Topic about ‘wanting’ to be an accountant.
Finally Glen announced that our club had been officially recognised with a DCP award – Distinguished Club Program – for club achievements in education and membership.
Next meeting
Our next meeting is on Monday 12th December – it’s our Christmas-themed meeting and we’ve already got lots of fun ideas for seasonal speaking!
IMPORTANT There has been a change of venue – this meeting will now be held at Lower Hall, London Welsh Centre, 157-163 Gray’s Inn Road, WC1X 8UE.
