Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Toastmasters International?|
What Is Toastmasters International?
1. What is Toastmasters?
Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational corporation headquartered in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. Its mission is to improve communication and leadership skills of its members and in general. Mainly, this works out to 'improving public speaking skills' but there is also a potent leadership and management aspect to the organization if you aspire to reach that level.
2. Why the name ‘Toastmasters’?
The name "Toastmasters" is a holdover from the founding of the organization, when one of the main types of public speaking a member of society would engage in was after-dinner speaking, a.k.a. toastmastering. It is rare that formal drinking and toasts take place, and these are usually at major banquets or conferences.
3. What happens at a meeting?
The format varies slightly from club to club, but the basics include:
* introduction of the Toastmaster of the Meeting, who presides over the program that day and explains the meeting as it goes along.
* prepared speeches from members.
* impromptu speeches from members (also known as Table Topics)
* oral evaluations of the prepared speeches.
* reports from other evaluation personnel, such as speech timer, grammarian, "ah" counter, wordmaster, and General Evaluator.
Meetings last anywhere from one hour (especially at lunch or breakfast) to three hours (if the club meets infrequently or has long-winded speakers).
4. What's a "prepared speech?"
When you join Toastmasters you receive a basic speaking manual with ten speech projects.
Each project calls on you to prepare a speech on a subject of your own choosing but using certain speaking principles. Each manual project lists the objectives for that speech and includes a written checklist for your evaluator to use when evaluating the speech. Thus, if you're scheduled to speak at a meeting, you generally pull out your manual a week or two in advance and put together a speech on whatever you like but paying attention to your goals and objectives for that speech. Then, when you go to the meeting, you hand your manual to your evaluator and that person makes written comments on the checklist while you speak. At the end of the meeting, that person (your evaluator) will rise to give oral commentary as well. The purpose of the extensive preparation and commentary is to show you what you're doing well, what you need to work on, and driving these lessons home so you're constantly
improving.
5. What is "Table Topics?"
Table Topics is fun! It's also terrifying. Basically, it calls on you, the guest or member, to present a one to two minute impromptu speech on a subject not known to you until the moment you get up to speak! A member of the club assigned to be Topicsmaster will prepare a few impromptu topics and call on members (or guests, if they've given assent in advance to being called on) to stand up and speak on the topic. Topics might include current events (e.g. "What would you do about Haitian boat people if you were President?") or philosophy ("If you had no shoes and met a man who had no feet, how would you feel?") or the wacky ("Reach into this bag. Pull an item out. Tell us about it.").
6. What is Evaluation?
The Evaluation program is the third of the three main parts to the meeting. All prepared speakers, as noted above, should have their speaking manuals with them and should have passed them on to the evaluators beforehand. During the speech, and after, each person's evaluator should make written notes and furthermore, plan what to say during the two to three minute oral evaluation. Evaluation is tough to do well because it requires an evaluator to do more than say "here's what you did wrong." A good evaluator will say "here's what you did well, and here's why doing that was good, and here are some things you might want to work on for your next speech, and here's how you might work on them." It's important to remember that the evaluator is just one point of view, although one that has focused in on your speech closely. Other members of the audience can and should give you written or spoken comments on aspects of your speech they feel important.
7. What's all this emphasis on time limits?
As noted above, speeches have time limits, Table Topics have time limits (1-2 minutes, usually) and evaluations have time limits (2-3 minutes, usually). This is in order to drive home the point that a good speaker makes effective use of the time allotted and does not keep going and going and going until the audience is bored. In the real world, quite often there are practical limits on how long a meeting can or should go; by setting time limits on speeches and presentations, participants learn brevity and time management and the club meeting itself can be expected to end on schedule.
Time limits are rarely enforced to the letter. In only a few situations will you find yourself cut off if you go too long, and that's up to the individual club. Most clubs don't cut speakers off if they go overtime.
It is common for clubs to use a set of timing lights to warn the speakers of the advance of time. All speeches and presentations have a time limit expressed as an interval, e.g. 5 to 7 minutes. A green light would be shown at 5 minutes, amber at 6, and red at 7. In Table Topics, the lights would go 1, 1.5, and 2 minutes respectively. When the green light comes on, you've at least spoken enough, though you need not finish right away, and when the yellow light comes on, you should begin wrapping up. If you're not done by the time the red light comes on, you should finish as soon as possible without mangling the ending of your speech.
Our club hold an audience vote for "best speaker," "best topic speaker," and "best evaluator" during the meeting and it's a practice in some clubs to disqualify people who go over or under time from these meeting awards. Check with the particular club to see what they do.
8. Why all this structure to the meeting?
If meetings sound complicated, we're sorry. Meetings generally are not complicated once you get used to the timing lights in the back and the different roles members of the group play. Since the average club is expected to have 20 or more members, you need a lot of roles for people to play in order to involve everyone. And, since meeting assignments vary from meeting to meeting, everyone gets practice doing everything over the course of several meetings. One meeting, you'll be assigned to give a speech; the next, you might be timer; the next, you might be the Toastmaster of the Meeting, running the whole show. It keeps you flexible and it keeps you from having to prepare a speech EVERY meeting, which would get old quickly.
9. How is Toastmasters more beneficial than other forms of speaking improvement?
College and high school courses in public speaking usually involve the students sitting through dozens of lectures followed by one or two speaking opportunities. When the speeches are over, you get a grade. Often, you get graded on what you did wrong. This isn't a way to build reassurance and motivation. Then too, you rarely get much of a chance to practice by doing. You get up at the end of the semester, give your speech, and sit down. Toastmasters is constant reinforcement and constant improvement. You learn by doing, not by sitting there while someone lectures for hours.
