TWP Newsletter October 19, 2020

Greetings my fellow Toastmasters.

Well we are in full swing of fall, Daylight Savings Time is near (November 1st) and winter is around the corner. (The first day of winter is December 21^st.)

Twice a year I grouse about Daylight Savings Time. It does not save time. It has zero benefits, and causes all kinds of problems. The sun still comes up and goes down every day, with the same number of hours between them. Let’s all hope that the private members bill clears third reading and then gets Royal Assent.

Things are going well for our club we had 24 membership renewals and now are at 26 current members. Our online meetings always have 16 or more attend.

We are all really enjoying the online meetings as it gives us a chance to practice web meeting skills and to be with our friends. We have streamlined the agenda to get the most we can out of our meetings. The warm up session continues to be liked and is a great way to start off a meeting.

We had a visit from our Area Director Dan Doberstein, who reported that our club is doing very well.

Nick Iliopoulos and Dan White both received Triple Crown awards for their progress in Pathways.

Our Charter Gala was a great success, we had a lot of fun and many good feelings. We were honored to have Kris Nelson, Jennifer Magee and Tony Nelson join us.

Here are some of the comments we received which were extra to the chats.

Tess Pierce                                        

That was an awesome meeting last night and what a great group of colleagues we have. I was exhausted but happy. Thanks to you both for the insight and support that helped launch this club.

Sharon Cardie

Thank you everyone for a wonderful charter party meeting last night!

Jennifer Magee

Division E Director

What a great event!  Made me miss attending your club and seeing you all even more!

Congratulations on an incredible first year!  Your membership and the energy shared amongst your “Pros Community” is something I wish I could bottle and sprinkle on all other clubs who may be searching for that same culture or “vibe”.  You have a great thing going, and I know you are all aware of it! and that is why it is so very successful!

I wish you all continued success and I will pop online to visit with you in the coming weeks.  Halloween sure sounds fun…. so please include me in your email invite for that week and I will see if I can make it! In costume, of course.

Cheers to a fantastic gala celebration!

Yours in Toastmasters

Jennifer

Jay Wijesundara

I’m so sorry I have missed an amazing meeting.

Praneetha Mulpuri

It was a wonderful meeting and I am glad to be part of the celebrations.

………

Here is a snap shot of the Gala in progress.

Letter from our Toastmasters International President

Here we have some tips for evaluating Table Topics.

TABLE TOPICS EVALUATOR

AIM:

• To assist Toastmasters to improve their impromptu speaking skills.
• To provide useful feedback to the speaker and the meeting on the Table Topics responses.

HINTS ON EVALUATING:

As the evaluator of the impromptu speaking segment, you have only 30 seconds per speaker to present your evaluation. Evaluations should be brief and to the point – restrict yourself to 2 or 3 points of praise and 1 or 2 aspects you consider could be improved. Remember the method of effective evaluation – Praise, Improve, and then Praise.

Do not repeat the question, this wastes time.

Do not evaluate whether the content of the answer was right or wrong.

Concentrate on the physical appearance, posture, eye contact, voice modulation, voice clarity, gestures. Was the answer a mini speech with an opening, body and close? Were they very evident? Was the question addressed? Did the speaker use humour?

PREPARATION:

Read the assignment guide on Table Topics Master (As is available on our website, www.toastmasterswhitbypros.org. To make your self familiar with how the session is run. Review any material you have on Effective Evaluations.

ON THE NIGHT:

• evaluation:

1. Commence your evaluation by naming the speaker.
2. Give a brief evaluation of the speakers.
3. Return control to the Table Topics Master.

POINTS TO REMEMBER:

Look and listen intently – and choose the points that will prove most useful to the speaker. With an experienced/effective Table Topics speaker it is often difficult to find more than one point for improvement so this is why it is necessary to employ all your listening and evaluating skills. It may be useful to point out to the audience a feature that made the speech particularly effective, eg: the word picture, the construction.

Evaluations are for the benefit of the whole meeting and not just for the speaker. If you say that one speaker had a pleasant smile and confident stance, these are characteristics we can all try to adopt when we next speak. Similarly, if you comment that eye contact was poor or that hand gestures would have enhanced the table topics answer, we can all consider how effective we are in these areas and seek to improve in our public speaking. In this way each and every evaluation helps all of us improve.

As the evaluations are for everyone, address your comments to the meeting and not directly to the person (as in “you”), eg. Joan’s voice showed her enthusiasm for the subject and I could see from her natural hand gesture that Joan felt very comfortable answering this question.

TIMING:

30 seconds maximum for each speaker

TABLE TOPICS

Guidelines for Evaluation

• Praise ✓ Improve

Physical: What I saw

Appearance

Use of hand gestures

Eye Contact with audience

Facial Expressions

Voice: What I Heard

Tone

Vitality

Volume

Vocal Variety

Structure of Answer: What I Understood

Did opening get our attention Did response develop as mini speech

Was there a clear ending?

Language:

Appropriate use of words

Word pictures

Emotive words

Use of humour

Manner:

Enthusiastic

Confident

Poised

Timing:

Was speaker able to round

off within time

……

When we find ourselves thinking about negative past events remember this saying.