I have been quite passive in Toastmaster for the past while. I did not show up to the meeting unless I have a speech or there is a special event. Last week, the chairman of today’s meeting ask me whether I help out as an evaluator. Since I have no reason to decline, I show up in the meeting to evaluate a speech. It was a CC#4 speech and the goal is to make good use of words. Although I have done this speech project before, it was almost 3 years ago, the speech project seems a like a stranger to me. Before the speech, I quickly went over the manual, check out the speech objectives.
Those objectives should be common sense to me. Namely, use short words and short sentence; be specify; use vivid language to draw a mental picture for the audience; use rhetorical device to spicy up the speech, avoid jargon, filter words and filter phrases. Yet I found myself do not pay enough attention to those basic objectives when I am working on my speech nowadays. I know how to write a good speech in theory, but I fail to deliver the end product most of time. Evaluating beginner’s speech helps me review some basic speech skills that I mostly forgotten or carelessly ignored. When I am giving the evaluation, I not only point problems in speech, I also have to give examples on how to improve it. It is just like teaching a student force you to know the material thoroughly, giving an evaluation force you to make a good example yourself. I an suppose an advance speaker in the club, but I still have lots to learn from the beginners.