Community Blog

Administrator D64 Blog

Evaluations: the Heart of the Toastmaster Program

When you strengthen your evaluations, you help your fellow members improve, you develop your skills in delivering feedback, and you build a stronger club. It does not stop there. The techniques you practice in Toastmasters become even more valuable when they ripple out into your home, your workplace and your community. Here are the slides
and handout from the workshop Evaluations: the Heart of the Toastmaster Program delivered February 21, 2015 by Bev Doern, DTM, past District 64 Governor and evaluation enthusiast.

Evaluations – Heart of Toastmasters (slides_handout)

Administrator D64 Blog

That Can’t Be True – Writing a Tall Tales Speech

That Can’t Be True! – Writing a Tall Tales Speech

Prepared by Bev Phillips DTM

A tall tale is a story with exaggerated untrue elements told as if it were true.

Toastmasters Tall Tales Contest

  • 3 to 5 minutes +/- 30 seconds
  • Original content
  • Everyone can participate except District Officers

Suggestions:

  • Use lots of humour and exaggeration.
  • Begin with a 10- 20 second intro.
  • Have an easy-to-follow plot – buildup, twists, climax.
  • Describe clearly and vividly – paint verbal pictures.
  • End with a good conclusion that ties up the story.
  • Experiment with repeated phrases or gestures, and unusual movements or sounds (but don’t lose the element of surprise).
    • Remember – tell a story.

Ways to prepare:

Do Tall Tales in Table Topics at your club: Give speakers an implausible event and describe it as if it were true, or choose quotations and use them as punch lines for tall tales.

Write five recent frustrating situations in your life (spilled coffee, clogged drain, missed bus) and make up tall tales to solve them.

Examples of Tall Tales

  • Big Fish – 2003 movie directed by Tim Burton
  • The Secret of Roan Inish – 1994 movie directed by John Sayles

Thanks to “How to Tell Tall Tales” by Elizabeth Keogan, The Toastmaster magazine, August 2006

Administrator D64 Blog

PBS Toastmasters Valentine’s Day Event

Mark Friday, February 13, 2015, on your calendar. Bring your wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, significant other, better half, ball and chain or sympathy date, to the 21st annual PBS Toastmasters Valentines party!

It will be a great evening with a romantic meal at the Marigold Restaurant – 1245 Inkster Blvd. Expect a Table Topics event featuring, you guessed it, a love and romance theme. Nothing says love like a 50/50 draw and a rip roaring auction.

There will be a ton of great prizes up for auction. This will be a cash auction so stuff your pockets with loot and come have some fun!

Doors open at 6:30 and meal will be served for 7:00.   Tickets are $20. For tickets contact Carolyn Usick @ 204-999-7730.

Administrator D64 Blog

I see something in you

Welcome to Toastmasters!  Those are the happy words you will hear when you visit one of our clubs. If joining Toastmasters has been one of your goals, or even a New Year’s resolution, there is no better time to visit a club than now.

For a practical example of how Toastmasters can change your life, let me share the story of Dananjaya Hettiarachchi  from Sri Lanka,-  the 2014 World Champion of Public Speaking,  with his speech “I see something in you”. It had a basic plot: a young man finds himself in trouble with the law. Through the pain in his mother’s tearful eyes and with the help of a mentor he is given another chance. With the help of Toastmasters and other programs, he finds his voice and wins the ultimate prize: a new life filled with self-confidence, excitement and promise.

The tools he used for his speech covered the basics for a good speech:

  • Gestures – he opened his speech with a beautiful red rose and said that this represented all of us, special until life changes us. He then tore petals off the rose.
  • Vocal Variety – he called out to the audience, how many of you have a mother who would have cried for seeing her son behind bars? He then included us all by saying ” my mother is like all of yours put together!
  • Base phrase – “I see something in you”, then added ” but I don’t know what it is”.  This was woven through his story first, by his mentor, then by his future wife, and by a Toastmasters member.
  • Humour – he pointed to a spot on the stage that represented his wife and commented that he was so fortunate to find his beautiful wife even though she said “I see something in you, but I don’t know what it is”, then he said “I couldn’t find a job, but I found a wife. Picture it with dramatic pauses, exaggerated facial expressions and a shy smile.
  • Drama – after sharing his journey from delinquent to successful speaker, he paused for a long moment, reached into the bucket on stage and pulled out another special red rose.

The audience exploded as he ended his speech.

I invite you to check it out on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbz2boNSeL0

Adapted from Winnipeg Free Press article of January 6, 2015.

Author:  Dorian Guerard, DTM