Tag: speeches

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Contest Past meetings

Competition themed meeting

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 as Toastmaster
Isabelle as Toastmaster for the competition theme meeting

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.

Welcome to London Victorians Negin!

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!

Well done Charlotte for successfully delivering the icebreaker speech

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.

Edwin, contest finalist
Congratulations Edwin, this weeks speech winner!

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.

Competition judging slip
Terry displaying the official judging slip

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).

Congratulations Nuala for winning the best evaluation!

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!

Well done Hannah for winning the best table topic!

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!

 

 

Categories
Education Past meetings

Speechathon – 28 March 2017

Once a month at London Victorians, we clear the decks for a speechathon. This affords members even more opportunities to give speeches and progress through the competent communicator programme.

It was fantastic to see the rapid progress being made by so many of our members in such a short space of time. And, as ever, the variety of topics was a treat for those attending.

Our people skills certainly benefited from the quality of speeches last night. Cleo taught us how to build rapport and Pascale talked us through the five languages of love. While Alexandro gave us an insight into courting in northern Spain.

Pascale winning best speaker

We also heard about the plight facing the world’s elephants, learned that mum’s have superhuman powers and were wowed by a powerful poetry recital. Judy had us on our feet at times as she shared her passion for dance with us.

Alex was also voted best speaker – we had two winners!

Thanks to all who attended and participated and don’t forget that next week we’re back to normal with the second half devoted to table topics and impromptu speaking.

Thomas gets another ribbon for best evaluator
Terry welcoming Charlotte as a new member
Categories
Past meetings Toastmasters International

Toastmasters Meeting – 6th September

On Tuesday 6th September guests and members were treated to a meeting full of fun, energy and enthusiasm as former President Florian Bay took to the stage as Toastmaster of the Meeting.

Eleanor G was grammarian with the word of the day being “quaint”, which with this being London Victorians, this meeting was never going to be! Gary stood in at the last minute as timekeeper, telling us that if you want to be a valuer of life then you should be a valuer of time. Eleanor H completed the functionaries as harkmaster, ensuring everyone listened intently, with the promise of chocolate rewards if we did.

Competent Communicator Speeches

Bruna doing Competent Communicator Speech 2 - Organise Your SpeechMajdouline El Aasemi gave the first speech with her icebreaker titled “Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum” which translates to “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”. Majdouline’s speech gave us insight into how she views the world by sharing some short stories of her life. An impassioned speech, definitely achieving the objectives and displaying a vast array of speaking skills far in advance of an icebreaker.

The second speaker was Bruna who was doing her second speech from the competent communicators manual. Immediately grabbing the audience’s attention with a theatrical opening, Bruna used rhetorical questions throughout to encourage us to think about how we make decisions in life. The speech was titled “Oh, noooo, it’s going to be a disaster” but Bruna’s confidence and engaging style made sure it was never going to be.

The third speaker of the meeting was Fahad who was doing an advanced speech from the Speaking to Inform manual. Fahad had the whole audience involved, he had us all on our feet, eyes closed, breathing purposefully, demonstrating how we can find calm in stressful situations. He called this finding your “Ha-Ra”, which was also the title of his speech. With everyone feeling so calm and refreshed after his interactive demonstration, it’s not surprising Fahad won the best speaker award for the meeting.

Table Topics

Terry doing Table Topics

The second half of the meeting Sophia took to the stage as Table Topic Master. Instead of asking a question of the speakers, Sophia asked them each to pick a surprise item from a bag and to sell it to the audience. This led to some hilarious instances including Pranav almost convincing us that a paint brush was in fact a magical brush that makes you love life and Terry doing an amazing improvised sketch of a mum and daughter extolling the virtues of the platinum range of Fairy Liquid.

The competition was tough as the standards were high but it was Florian who won the best table topic speaker award with his promotion of a can of hairspray that would, apparently, prevent your hair from making you look like a shrew!

Join us at our next meeting on 13th September when London Victorians will be hosting their annual Humorous Speaking and Table Topics contests.

View all the meeting photos in our gallery or see us on Facebook.

Categories
Past meetings Toastmasters International

Best Scientific Advances and Improvised Speeches – 12th July 

Florian was the Toastmaster of the evening and chose a very “Florianesque” theme of the evening: What are the best scientific advances?  Personally, I would have picked toilet paper, but thankfully the speakers and functionary had more meaningful answers such as antibiotics, the wheel, and the Internet.  Fahad as the Grammarian picked the word phenomenal and asked the audience to yell “EUREKA” whenever it was used in the meeting.  This ensured plentiful usage.  Cleo was timekeeper and Judy was Harkmaster.

We had four speeches from various levels of the CC.  The first speaker, Christophe, started us off by explaining why veganism is trending.  It was quite a deep speech with questions such as why do we call it beef rather than cow or pork rather than pig. Was it to distance ourselves from the animal?  I had to think about it that night when I chowed down on my beef tartar.

The second speaker was Eleanor who successfully convinced us that Beethoven’s music is so good that NASA decided to put his music on the Voyager spacecraft that is now 15 billion kilometers away from Earth.  And the craziest fact about Beethoven is that he continued to compose against all odds even as he became completely deaf.

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Eleanor delivering her speech

George is an EBay guru.  In his speech, he told the story of how a 3-hour PowerPoint presentation in the British Library turned into him publishing a book that is available on Amazon.  And he did not stop there!  He wrote three more books after that.

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George delivering his speech

The last speaker of the evening was Tatiana, with a speech about her Pie Challenge.  She made a bet with a friend to bake a pie in as many countries as possible.  It turns out this is quite an undertaking.  Think about it.  You need a kitchen, ingredients, and time in order to make this happen.  And she has done it 8 times now!  I have never even baked a pie in my life!

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Tatiana delivering her speech

Lastly on agenda were table topics with our excellent Table Topics Master Nuala.  She provided pictures for the speakers to improvise on.  We had several great stories including Pranav, who would build a nuclear reactor using a paper clip and bandaid and John who told the story of an old lady that kidnapped his cat Curtis.

Overall, the meeting was phenomenal!  EUREKA!

Categories
Past meetings

Impromptu Speeches & Prepared Speeches – 7th June

On Tuesday Eleanor G was Toastmaster, engaging the audience by asking them to solve riddles throughout the meeting. She had a team to assist her; Paul was timekeeper and Terry was Sergeant at Arms. Bruna was Harkmaster and Prateek was Grammarian choosing “Wild” for the word of the day. We had four speakers delivering speeches from the Competent Communication manual.

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Eleanor G the Toastmaster of the meeting

First on stage was George delivering speech 2 “Organise your speech”. He had just returned from his farm in Uganda and to coincide, his Ugandan farm was also the subject of his speech. He wore a Ugandan hat during the speech while informing the audience of the hot climate, the traffic, and how he grew pineapples, passion fruit and bananas on his farm.

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George wearing his hat

Second on stage was Hannah delivering her Speech 4, “How to say it”. She tackled the complex subject of the EU referendum. Using clear and concise language she explained to the audience reasons for and against remaining in the EU. 

John was next who was also delivering speech 4 from the manual. John spoke about fear, vulnerability and the need for belonging in his speech. He referenced ways we can belong by having courage and acceptance, proposing a new law of the jungle, to keep people connected. He ended the speech in a quote “the strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf”

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John’s prepared speech

Finally, Robert delivered his speech 6 “Vocal variety”. His speech was about Bolivia, the best place he’s ever been. He told stories of a friend jumping into water where unknown to his there were crocodiles. He informed us also about the piranhas and also that Bolivia is the only place in the World you can see pink Dolphins!

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Robert’s speech about Bolivia

Eleanor B was table topic master asking volunteers to give an impromptu speech on whether they agree or disagree with her chosen statement. Her statements ranged from the view that computer games encouraged violence, to whether climate change is a load of rubbish. Six volunteers got the opportunity to speak on stage with no prior knowledge of these questions, and then were evaluated by Annabel who provided each speaker with commendations and recommendations for forthcoming impromptu speaking situations.

Join us next week for more speeches, evaluations and impromptu speeches.