Posts Tagged ‘public speaking’

Last Thursday law the club level competition for the International Speech Contest.

I’m pleased to say I won the Leeds City contest and will be advancing on to the area level contest in April. I was looking forward to facing off against one of our club’s Distinguished Toastmasters, but he unfortunately dropped out. Never the less, Dinesh provided some tough competition.

If you missed it, don’t worry, the White Rose Speakers competition is happening on the 27th, so you can attend that one instead!

Last week, I attended the local Club Officer Training for Toastmasters. Not only did I learn some interesting stuff, but our Area Governor Shelagh also surprised me with one of the newly purchased trophies for winning the area humorous speech contest in September. Lets hope I can win it back this year!

For my seventh project in my Toastmasters Competent Communicator manual, “research your topic”, I presented a talk entitled “Were the Catholics Framed?” This looked at whether the gunpowder plot was actually a set up by the Protestants, to frame the Catholics and increase the persecution.

Much like the arguments made that 9-11 was allowed to create an excuse to invade Afghanistan, the claims against 5-11 are almost certainly untrue as well. Not that there isn’t good evidence, but if you compare it to the Moon Landings, there is what looks like good evidence to suggest they were faked too – but when you dig a little deeper, you soon find the evidence isn’t so good, and you need very good evidence to belief a conspiracy theory.

I felt the talk went well, and managed to see off some good competition to take another Best Speaker ribbon – my fifth overall, and forth in a row. That said, there is certainly some room for improvement.

Part of my talk included a letter, which I read out, but having learned the letter I decided not to glance at it. This was a risky strategy because it might look to some people as if the letter wasn’t genuine, and indeed one person said he had wondered this. The letter was of course genuine, I had just prepared reasonably well, but maybe a few fake glances down at it would have been helpful.

Given the time constraints, I also cut some material out and hoped that it still all made sense. It did, except perhaps for my use of the word recusancy – the act of not attending CoE services, a crime that Catholics were often fined for.

I also felt I could have worked more movement into the speech, though nobody pulled me up on this in the evaluation or feedback. In any case there is work to do – as I write this, we are only 26 days away from the first round of the Public Speaking World Championships – and I haven’t started my speech yet!

In a few months, the Public Speaking World Championship qualifiers begin. Last year’s winner, Ryan Avery won with a talk entitled “Trust is a Must.” The talk combines superb use of language, a strong moral message, gestures, humour and many other techniques to form a phenomenal competition speech.

The sixth project in your Competent Communicator module is all about vocal variety. So I decided to do a retelling of an old classic, the one about the man who prays to god to save him from the flood, then goes on to ignore all the help god sends, expecting a miracle instead.

This worked well for the project as it allowed me to use a quiet slow voice when the man is praying, and a fast loud voice when his would-be rescuers are trying to convincing him to come to safety.

While I personally thought I was well beaten by one of our Distinguished Toastmasters, who gave a brilliant speech about how he was trying to play the blues harp (also known as a harmonica to those outside the trade, so I’m told), the voting went my way and I ended up adding another Best Speaker ribbon to my collection.

Last Thursday, I took on the role of Toastmaster for the first time.

As well as speakers, each Toastmasters meeting is run by a series of roles, including the Ah Counter and Grammarian, but arguably the toughest role is that of Toastmaster – the host who begins by introducing the club and what we’re about, and goes on to introduce everyone else as well. It provides more stage time than any other role as you’re constantly up and down throughout the meeting.

I was reasonably satisfied with how it went. It certainly wasn’t without issue – we had to move to a different hotel just hours before the meeting, which meant we weren’t totally prepared with voting slips, and that threw me a little.

Also, despite my system of crossing everything off on the agenda as we went, I still forgot to include one of the feedback sessions until someone reminded me. But overall, it went reasonably smoothly, and I seemed like a nice way to round off my Toastmasters anniversary.

For my fifth project in the Toastmaster’s Competent Communicator series, I presented a talk entitled “A Humanist Soup Kitchen?”

This referenced my open letter to David Cameron, inviting him to come and see the Humanist Action Group doing its thing, after he had suggested that no such humanist enterprises existed.

Despite the talk creeping up on me somewhat (mainly due to being ill all the previous weekend), I managed to get everything in shape and took home another Best Speaker ribbon. Good times.

Having previously won the club competition and area competition, I travelled down to Donington to take part in the Division E humorously speaking competition. Division E covers an area from Royal Leamington Spa and above – the North of England and Scotland.

I got flattened at the competition, I didn’t even place. This was disappointing as while I thought I was well beaten for first place, I thought I might have done enough to get in the top three. But live and learn, the next competition starts in March, and that one ends in the World Championship of Public Speaking.

Last month, I entered the Leeds City club competition of the Toastmasters humorous speaking contest. In a bit of a bookies upset, I won, which resulted in my proceeding on to the area level competition.

I had done quite a lot of preparation going in to it – Dinesh had volunteered to come over and evaluate it, I also did it in front of my parents and sister, as well as going to the other Toastmasters club based in Leeds, White Rose, to gather more feedback.

The day itself didn’t start too well though – having avoided the colds going around all week, I was finally struck down on the morning and when I phoned up to check what time I needed to be there, it turns out I was late! So I dragged myself out the door as soon as possible and made it half way through the introductions.

Luckily, my illness didn’t show through too much and in the end I must have done something right, as I ended up winning this one as well!

This means…

A) I’m currently the reigning champion for Area 15 (an area that covers South and West Yorkshire).

B) I proceed on to the division competition. I’m part of Division E, which is an area that covers the North of England and Scotland as well. That takes place in Donington later this month!

On Thursday, it was Leeds City Toastmasters “humorously speaking” competition. The club holds biannual competitions, one in the spring for motivational speeches and this one, for comedic ones – these then advance to the area competition and then continue moving on and up from there.

We started the evening meeting at Nawaab, an Indian restaurant on Wellington Street. It was good value at £11 for a three course meal, but my stomach certainly wasn’t too happy with what I put in it and the desserts were straight out of the freezer – packaging included and no time to thaw.

We made it to the competition just in time and I certainly didn’t fancy my chances – all three of the other speakers who had entered the contest were senior members of the club, one a former area governor who regularly speaks from the advanced manuals.

Somehow, I turned up with the victory though and now move onto the area competition in a few weeks!