Category Archives: How To Say It

Inner Beauty

The Toastmaster of the day role requires various skills such as organisation, leadership and quick thinking skills. Marina, who played this role exhibited all of these skills. Ola performed her first role as the grammarian and she appeared natural, Ana also did a professional job as the timekeeper of the evening.
Just before the speakers, David gave an interesting thought as to why men and women wear buttons on different sides their clothes.
In the first speech of the evening, Juliet did not fail to impress. She was confident and natural as ever. The gist of her speech was around inner beauty. Juliet spoke with ease and took charge of the stage as she spoke about looking beyond appearance. After using some anecdotes to add a personal touch, she ended her speech by ordering the audience to hug each other. On a cold evening like it was, a hug was very much needed indeed!
Second to the stage was Maria with a very thoroughly researched speech about the different parts of the brain and their functionalities. Her use of visual aid help the audience to not only understand but also visualise the part of the brain being talked about. If there is one take home lesson from Maria’s speech, it was her advice on meditation and also focusing on activities with full attention. Alberto her evaluator was pleased with the speech and suggested pauses during her next speech for the audience’s brain to better absorb the information.
Mabel chose to centre her fourth speech on focusing on yourself with the title; “Treat others the way you want to be treated”. She did something clever, instead of the old saying; “Treats others how you would like to be treated” Mabel preached about “Treat yourself how you would like to be treated”. She used effective body language and anecdotes to present her point.
On the next part of the meeting, Table Topic Master Jane, was keen enough to bring some books along for Manulo, John, Ana, Christian and Jonas to give an impromptu speech about why they should not be lent the books. It was amusing to witness the quick thinking skills of the participants. Table topics are always the amusement point of every Toastmaster’s meeting and this was no different.

Written By Christian

Strip Away Your Fears

The first meeting of October was ‘cool’ just like the time of season itself. Before Maria and Jesus would come up to explain their respectful roles as grammarian and time keeper, Eric the Toastmaster of the day, did something a little bit different in how guests are welcomed. Instead of the conventional “Hello and where are you from” form of introduction, he instructed guests to just say their names. Later at the end of the program, he gave the guests a chance to speak again by providing feedback on the evenings meeting.

In the main part of the nights program, Ivan lead the way with his Icebreaker in which he stripped off of his shirt to reveal his cyclist jersey. This was of course part of his plan to illustrate his passion for cycling as he delivered his autobiography speech. He talked about his brief childhood in Colombia, moving to the States and subsequently to Madrid. Marina who was evaluating him praised him for not using any notes.

Mabel on her third speech, delivered an educational speech on Visual, Audio, and Kinaesthetic (VAK) learning styles. She practiced what she preached as she used visual aids to capture audience attention. And also pitched her voice clear and loud enough to be heard from afar. Maintaining eye contact also added a personal touch with the audience.

Juliet’s fourth speech in her fourth month as a member was entitled “The Power Of Many”. One take home lesson from her speech was her advice on coming out more when faced with tougher situation in order to receive help. Jane was her evaluator and applauded her use of anecdotes to add flavour to the speech. To keep the momentum going, Eric commented on Juliet delivering her fifth speech next month to make it five speeches in five months.

The table topics was conducted by Ana. To help her carry it out were, Lewis, Javier, Villy, Raquel and Christian who delivered impromptu speeches about their various job roles such as a hotel bed warmer, and a life guard at a nude beach. The quick thinking and improvisation skills of the participants made it an eventful session.

Written by Christian.

Meeting Summary – 17/12/2014

Public Speaking is a challenge for almost anybody without any speech disorder, so imagine how it can be if you must practice that suffering stuttering. This was a common idea that came to our mind when the first guest introduced himself, Ben, from Israel, and told us about the club he is creating back home in the Israeli Stuttering Association, where he is the president. This visiting Toastmasters also participated as Timekeeper of the Day.

The meeting agenda contained one Icebreaker (first speech in the club) and two projects number 4 from the Competent Communication Manual (“How To Say It”), so there were many good examples on the usage of the language in oral communications to effectively communicate your message in a specific context. Just one from each speaker:

“Expect nothing, appreciate everything” (Tony Bryant)

“Your life is in your friend’s hands” (Jesús Clemente)

“You are skeptic or you are a Harry Potter like me” (Maria Marjevscaia)

The two first ones make you reflect, and survive the speech itself. They are powerful to stick the message in the audience’s brain. The last one had a specific purpose during her speech: connecting the audience to the speech, to the speaker, and introducing a piece of humour with the reference to Harry Potter.

The club’s founder, and Distinguished Toastmaster, Jim Dodson, offered us an interesting Table Topics session, and served as inspiration for future Table Topics Master in the future. He commented some news, making everybody be part of the story and form an opinion about it, and suddenly dropped the question to the victims. The main advantage of this technique is that you make everybody be prepared for the question, so that everybody participates in a way, and the speaker is ready for the mini-speech.

Written by Nacho