Speech #2

I completed my second speech today, where the objective was to organize my speech.  I talked about the life of being a twin (I have a twin brother) and organized it into positives and negatives.  I was nervous before my speech, but not as much as I was before my icebreaker.  Overall, the speech went very well.  I spoke for around 5 minutes and forty seconds and the required time range was 5 to 7 minutes.  My evaluations said that my use of humor was great and that I looked more confident than on my last speech.  Some things that I needed to work on were my movement and eye contact with the whole audience.  I struggled with these on my first speech as well, so for my third speech I will try to focus on these two elements specifically.

Although my senior project is coming to a close and I will be giving my presentation next week, I will definitely stay in Toastmasters over the summer right up until I move out for college.  I'm grateful that ThunderRidge has this senior project program, because without it, I would have never gotten the courage or motivation to join a club like this on my own.  I will try to get as many speeches done as I can and I will continue to update this blog with my experiences and feelings as I continue improving my speaking skills. 

 

Improving my Speaking Skills

Today's meeting was full of members and the speeches that were given were all great in my opinion.  The first two were normal speeches from members working out of the speech books and the third was given by our club speech contest winner who was practicing for the upcoming district competitions. All three of them were experienced and I felt that I could learn from them to improve my own speaking, especially the way they used gestures and involved the audience.  This was one of the area that my first speech needed improvement in, so hopefully I can incorporate them into my next one.

Table Topics made me nervous beforehand, like they always do, but I felt that in today's table topic I gave my strongest one yet.  I had no knowledge of the kind of question that I would be asked, but I was able to quickly think of an idea and made a solid speech which both got a main idea across and answered the question.  Plus, I spoke for over a minute and met the time requirement.  This really encouraged me to be more confident going to future meetings about Table Topics instead of worrying and being nervous about them for the whole meeting.

I have a busy schedule coming up in the next couple of weeks.  Next Thursday I will be giving my second speech and on the 27th I will give a speech to a board at school telling about my senior project of joining this club and the journey I have made as a Toastmaster.

Getting Better at Table Topics

I have gone to two meetings since my last post, and I feel that I've improved myself from some of the experiences that I had.  I did the role of the "ah counter" last week and counted both speaking disfluencies and laughs generated by each speaker.  This forced me to pay close attention to each speech being given as I tried to listen for certain words or moments.  In the past I have sometimes just totally spaced out when people are giving speeches and I miss some key details and things that I could use to improve my own speaking.  By filling this role in the club for a week, I am more capable of being fully attentive during speeches, which will help me in the long run.

I also had the chance to participate in table topics for both of the meetings.  During the meeting a week ago, I got asked a question that I didn't see coming and gave a jumbled response, which discouraged me a little.  However, this week, I actually spoke within the 1-2 minute time frame for table topics with my speech being around a minute and thirty seconds.  I feel very proud of this because I am actually improving, little by little.  All of my previous table topics had been under a minute, but I finally overcame that challenge.  I plan to continue persisting and doing table topics every week even though they make me feel uncomfortable because I know I will keep improving.

In two weeks, I will be giving my second speech.  The goal is "Organize Your Thoughts," which I don't think I'll have a problem with because one of the biggest compliments that my evaluator gave me on my icebreaker speech was my organization.