Written by Elena (edited by Swarajit)
Introduction
The meeting was opened by Club President Glen who welcomed new and returning guests as well as regular ones and encouraged the audience to improve their competence and confidence at Toastmasters meetings.
The Toastmaster of the meeting was VP of Membership and Mentoring Hari who capably guided the audience through the agenda. He was assisted by the Grammarian Paula and Timekeeper Janet, who described their roles very clearly and thoroughly, and carefully supervised the meeting.
Prepared speeches
Tonight’s first speaker was Marielle with her Ice Breaker speech entitled “The Big 3-0”. She felt that turning thirty is a key milestone in life for everyone. She summarised previous goals in her life from the age of eighteen such as getting married and having children, which then had to be revised into new ones when they did not quite work out the way she had planned and she had found herself “on the shelf”. Marielle suggested everybody approaching their thirtieth birthday should just live as they like and be safe!
The second speaker was Elena, who presented her No. 4 speech entitled “The Death of Trust” in which she shared with us her thoughts about nuclear energy. At school Elena faced nuclear energy issues for the first time when being trained in safety precautions following the disaster at Chernobyl and also while studying energy resources at secondary school. However, after the more recent nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Elena was not sure that it is as safe as she was taught.
The next speaker, Jo, gave her No. 4 speech entitled “Rising to the Challenge”. She revealed her passion for cooking a soufflé (even though she’d never eaten one!) and how long it took her to prepare it. Eventually Jo enjoyed the process and the taste of the soufflé so much that she decided to treat her friends. In the end she stated that the cooking of a soufflé is a challenge everyone should rise to!
The fourth speaker this evening was Adam, who presented his speech No. 6 speech entitled “Awake”. He stated that one day we would sleep forever so why do we need to sleep eight hours a day when we could enjoy three benefits from sleeping less: to be healthier, to be more social and stay young for longer.
Speech evaluations
The second part of the meeting started with evaluations of the prepared speeches. Studying other speakers is a critical skill for public speaking because the ability to analyse a speech will accelerate the growth of any speaker.
Swarajit gave an evaluation of Marielle’s Ice Breaker speech. He praised the fact that the speech had very effective opening with a rhetorical question which at once drew the attention of the audience. Marielle looked very confident on the stage and her eye contact was great. As an improvement Swarajit recommended using more pauses.
Ahmed evaluated Elena’s No. 4 speech. He commented that Elena had chosen a very technical subject but had then taken the audience through the personal journey of her learning about it. Ahmed commended Elena’s use of visual aids in a well-structured speech and recommended that she work on voice projection in the future.
New member Wayne evaluated Jo’s No. 4 speech. He really liked the fabulously precise language, strong opening and conclusion of the speech with powerful, short sentences. A recommendation that Wayne made was regarding Jo’s use of notes.
Carrie gave an evaluation of Adam’s No. 6 speech. She liked that he had started by inviting the audience to participate and continued with humour later on which was very engaging. In Carrie’s opinion there was a bit too much movement by Adam on the stage that slightly hindered good voice projection.
Table Topics
The Table Topics part of the meeting was opened by Topics Master of the evening Renars who performed this role for the first time. He invited us to think about a very pleasant time – holidays – and encouraged participants to use improvisation while they answered his questions: “What you would like to do on your dream holiday?”; “Do you need more or fewer holidays or is it just right?”; “What would you do if all your Christmas gifts were stolen on Christmas Eve?”; “What was the funniest or craziest thing that had happened to you on holiday”; and “If you were an Avatar, where would you go on holiday?”
All the participants coped very well with the challenging questions and were evaluated by the evening’s Table Topics evaluator, Jason. He praised the fact that all participants were smiling, warm and engaging with the audience and used a great freestyle technique which gave them extra time for thinking on their feet. The common recommendation was to pay attention to hand gestures.
After the Table Topics section, Paula provided the Grammarian’s report where she appreciated Carrie’s solitary use of the word of the day, “Fastidious”, and evaluated the use of language, metaphors, rhetorical devices and unnecessary ‘filler’ words by participants during the meeting and reminded the audience of the most felicitous expressions used during the meeting.
The General Evaluator for this evening was Jakub, who recently took second place at the UK and Ireland round of Toastmasters’ International Speech Contest which was held in Wexford. He evaluated all the meeting participants that were yet to be evaluated. Jakub gave a comprehensive evaluation of the club, the meeting, evaluators and functionaries without using any notes at all!
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 Jason for his fantastic Table Topics evaluation. The Best Table Topics speaker award went to Henry for his great “Superman’s Holiday” table topic, and the highly coveted Best Speaker award went to Jo for her brilliant “Soufflé” speech. The President’s discretional award went to guest Dot, visiting from a US Toastmasters club.
Next meeting
Our next meeting is on Monday 28th May 2012, upstairs at The Clerk and Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BX.
