What does being a Toastmaster do for me?

The Toastmasters program helps you through various Pathways, such as the Competent Communicator, but is not a formal course such as Communications 111. There are no grades or tests, but instead you get to participate in speaking opportunities like Table Topics and the Ice Breaker Speech to get started. Club meetings help you to work together to study and practice your communication and leadership skills.

You can work with introductions, perform roles during club meetings, and work on projects, such as the ten speech projects in the Competent Communicator. In this pathway you build speaking skills with each new project. Most of the speeches are five to seven minutes, focusing on a single skill. It works on everything from organization, to body language, to researching a topic. This will help you learn to speak with clarity, and confidence.

With each speech you give, you will be evaluated to help you grow and learn. They will point out strengths and offer suggestions on how to improve the speech. This pathway focuses on the basics of public speaking, and your evaluator will focus on the basics as well. If you are working on vocal variety for your speech, they will also focus on it when giving your evaluation. The pathway will help you gain the skills through it's ten projects. At then end of your pathway projects you will receive an Award, for this pathways it is the Competent Communicator Award.

Want to learn more than just the basics? There are plenty more pathways for communication that you can work on, ranging from storytelling, to career related learning. After you have finished the pathway, Toastmasters International can send a letter to your employer if you wish them to, notifying them of your achievement. Different professional organization provide compensation, recognition, and even professional development credit for your participation in Toastmasters. To find out whether your organization has any of these offers contact your supervisors.

At the end of the day the experience of being a Toastmasters member can provide insight, learning, and connections to curriculum and community you may not have access to otherwise. What are you waiting for?

Officer training, Yaquina specific

Make up officer training 8/21 at Yaquina Toastmasters club in Newport, OR. 

We started off with a speech presentation from Area Director, Bob and some great Table Topics that discussed What is your "Why?, Duties of the 7 Officer positions, and Pathways program.

Check out the mostly full video of our meeting. How would you answer there questions?

District 7: How to Chose your Path

Worried about having your speech evaluated?

Toastmasters is a club that helps its members to improve their speaking and leadership skills. In order to do this, when a person gives a speech, they will get an evaluation.When the speech evaluator is listening to the speech, they will look for certain things: body language, content, voice, and confidence. In addition to this, if a person is working out of a manual, they will use the specific guidelines in the book to base their evaluation on.

Example: Speech project 5 Your body speaks
The evaluator would look for the use of stance, movement, gestures, facial expressions and eye contact to express your message, and achieve your speech's purpose.
Make your body language smooth and natural.
This speech is from five to seven minutes.

Example of a Speech 5 evaluation:
First impression: WOW!
Preparation: Excellent! We learned a lot of history, psychology and about you.
Manner: Satisfactory. Great use of leather
Posture: poised and balanced
Gestures: satisfactory
Body Movement: Purposeful, smooth, and steady!
Eye contact: Established visual bonds
Facial expressions: animated and friendly
Speech purpose: satisfactory
Speech organization: Logical and clear
What could they do differently? You can use fists to emphasize "evil"
What did you like about the speech? The depth of history and educating us all

Check out a Sample Path

Toastmasters Pathways program allows you to select a path that assists you in reaching your goals in speaking ability and passions. Think of why you joined Toastmasters and how you want to better your speaking skills and where you hope to use it. All these things can be worked through in one path or other time of many paths.

This is a sample pathway to give you an example of the process and what is expected.

Typical Meeting Schedule

Start- 7:00 AM
Our president will begin the meeting, and ask if there were any outside speeches. From there we go over any business we need to take care of, and the president will turn the lecture over to the Toastmaster of the day.

The Toastmaster will introduce the rolls of the day: grammarian, table topicsmaster, timer, general evaluator, and speech evaluator. They will then announce the day's speakers, with a short introduction.

Both speaker will give their speech at the lectern, and will be evaluated by a speech evaluator to find out what was good, and what needs improvement in their speech.

Toastmaster of the day will come back up to the front and remind everyone to fill out our evaluation sheets and then pass them to the speaker.

Table topics is when the topics master will ask random members a to speak on a topic such as "Please make a commercial about shoes" or "Tell us story about when you have been on vacation, and a problem arose".

To end the meeting, each roll will review what they were looking for that day. Grammarian will report on umms and interesting words. Table topics will present the award to the best impromptu one minute speech. Timer will state how long everyone spoke for, especially the speaker and speech evaluators. Lastly, the general evaluator will say how everyone who wasn't evaluated did, such as how timely the Toastmaster was, and how transitions between rolls were.

The president will then take over to give the schedule for next week, and conclude the meeting.
End- 7:50 AM

Meeting 7/17 - Theme Family

Our Toastmaster Kathleen showed us a day in the life of a grandparent, Lauralee brought her family story into a fairy tale of kingdoms, castles, kings and queens. A awesome round of Table Topics about family kingdoms, chosen family, and embarrassing moments. A short meeting but packed full. Check out the full video.