Introductions
Club president Femi opened the meeting with a reminder that sometimes progress is dependent on practising things we already know rather than learning something new. He encouraged all participants to give feedback in a way that builds the speaker’s confidence and also to join with the Toastmaster in making speakers welcome through enthusiastic applause.
The Timekeeper Rajeev explained the purpose of his role and gave an overview of the green, amber, and red “traffic light” system used to help speakers keep to time.
Grammarian Angela introduced the word of the day, “salubrious”, gave a helpful definition – “health-giving or healthy”, and encouraged all participants to use it wherever possible.
Prepared speeches
In his ice breaker speech entitled “Heroes” brand-new member Marcin asked the question “What is a hero?”. It’s someone who inspires you to be better, he told us. Marcin’s hero was a man who loves flying – Richard Branson – and he went on to talk about his hero from three perspectives: his family, his smile, and his attitude.
In his No. 2 speech “Regression to the Mean” Barnaby opened with an interesting fact, that highly intelligent women tend to marry less intelligent men. He went on to explain the statistical basis for this – that all things tend towards the average. For example, the children of two exceptionally tall people are likely to grow up to be shorter than their parents.
The third speaker was Renars with his No. 9 speech, whose objective is to persuade. In “Stereotyping” he said that as human beings we make judgements about people many times every day. He told us how his own stereotypes of people had been proven wrong in the past and as an antidote to people making assumptions about him based on where he’s from, he now just tells people “I’m from Planet Earth!”.
The final speaker was Femi with an advanced speech from the Storytelling manual. He opened by taking us right into the action – a heated conversation with his neighbours about unreasonable levels of noise. In a passionate speech with lots of emotional language he told the story of the events which had led up to this climactic scene and how he eventually triumphed over this nuisance through sheer perseverance.
Evaluations
Paul gave a very encouraging evaluation of Marcin’s ice breaker speech. He particularly commended Marcin’s use of a specific story – about an extreme way to learn to swim – to illustrate one aspect of Richard Branson’s character.
Ahmed gave thoughtful and detailed feedback to Barnaby on his statistical speech. He commended Barnaby’s strong opening and closing but cautioned against using too many different examples to make the same point – better to use fewer examples and expand on each one more.
Eugenia evaluated Renars’ persuasive speech. She found much to commend but felt that he could have spent a little time explaining some of the benefits of stereotyping, since it must also serve some positive function.
Glen gave an entertaining evaluation of Femi’s advanced speech about nuisance neighbours. He loved the drama and the passion in the speech but advised Femi to keep an eye on the clock to avoid having to truncate his story at the end.
Table topics
The topics master for the evening Elena explained the benefit of regular impromptu speaking – “practice makes perfect” – and introduced her theme for the session: Health.
Volunteers drawn from the ranks of members and guests alike were invited to spend 1 to 2 minutes answering questions such as:
- What was your most “salubrious” holiday?
- Where is the healthiest place to eat?
- What is the healthiest type of job?
- What is the healthiest way to travel?
- What is the healthiest type of relationship?
- What is the healthiest type of sport?
Reports
Our visiting topics evaluator Doug, from Angel Speakers, had wise and thoughtful feedback for all – no mean feat when evaluating six speakers almost immediately after they have spoken!
Returning to give her report the grammarian Angela commended multiple uses of the word of the day and highlighted other effective uses of language, such as rhetorical questions. She particularly enjoyed Doug referring to Toastmasters as being “like crack cocaine” he confessed he was addicted!
Awards
Closing the meeting, Femi gave a few announcements – including news of an upcoming storytelling workshop – and then gave out the awards based on votes from the audience:
- best evaluator went to Glen for his detailed evaluation of Femi’s own speech
- best table topic went to Henry for talking about his most salubrious holiday
- best speaker went to Femi who had to give the award to himself!
Next meeting
Our next meeting is Monday 11th March, upstairs at The Clerk & Well, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6.30pm for a prompt 6.45pm start.
