This week’s meeting was extra special competition theme. Not only did we have two speeches from both ends of the Toastmasters spectrum, two division finalists delivered their winning speeches! They are just 2 steps away from the international speech contest finals in August in Vancouver.
All speakers stated which competition they would most like to win (excluding a public speaking competition). Answers ranged from bake off to directing to golf and gave some interesting insights into our members’ hobbies.
Isabelle was the Toastmaster for the night and guided us through the meeting with great poise. She was supported by Mickaela as Timekeeper and Andrew as Harkmaster. Negin, our newest member, was Sergeant at Arms and welcomed the numerous guests who joined our meeting.
Speeches
The initial part of the meeting was for prepared speeches. First up was Charlotte who gave a very inspiring icebreaker speech about her leap into the unknown to becoming a freelancer. Well done Charlotte for making the first step on the Toastmasters journey!
Next was Florian gave a Special Occasion Speech, titled “Roasting Terry”. He used humour and vocal variety to brilliant effect to challenge our President, Terry’s, reasons for becoming a vegetarian.
Prateek was the first of the contest finalists. He captivated the audience with dramatic displays of movement and a rousing call to action to challenge yourself and follow through.
Finally Edwin, the second contest finalist, delivered a powerful speech called “Me and my dad”. His story, with a clever twist in the middle, inspired the audience to let go and move on.
Good luck to Edwin and Prateek in the division contests. Don’t forget to book your tickets to the Division B contest on 22nd April and show your support.
Evaluations
After the speeches, Pascale, PY, Stephen and Nuala performed evaluations. Audience members also completed feedback slips or an official speech judging form for the contest finalists.
Speech feedback tip (provided by Nuala): The audience are more likely to engage with your message when they feel happy and laugh. Therefore it is important to include humour in your speech. Every Toastmasters international speech contest winner has had at least 8 instances of humour in their speech (roughly 1 laugh/minute).
Table topics
The second part of the meeting was for Table Topics. Terry was Table Topics Master and presented a unique theme. Members and guests talked about the same situation involving Waitrose, a man and a dog, while expressing a different emotion such as joy, surprise, or anger. Afterwards, Fahad evaluated all table topics succinctly with helpful tips. Well done to Christophe, Negin, Hannah, Vahagn, Naryan and Andrew for taking part!
Congratulations to Edwin, Nuala and Hannah, who were tonight’s respective speech, evaluator and table topics winners and to all who helped make this a marvellous meeting as always. We look forward to seeing members and guests at our meeting next week!
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