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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.
No. The organization includes approximately 180,000 members in 54
countries, including Australia,
the Bahamas, Canada, Ireland,
Japan, Malaysia, Mexico,
New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore,
South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
Toastmasters International publishes a complete set of materials in
English and basic materials in French, Spanish, and Japanese. As
translators make themselves available, more materials are translated.
Some areas have bilingual clubs.
All Toastmasters members belong to one or more clubs.
Clubs consist of at least eight members and may have forty or more. The
recommended size for a club is twenty or more.
Clubs exist in communities around the world, especially in North
America, and it's a rare locality in the United States that doesn't have
at least one Toastmasters club within thirty minutes' driving time. There
are, at present, over 8,000 clubs around the world, and most of them are in
the United States.
There are many sorts of clubs: community clubs, military clubs, company
clubs, prison clubs, collegiate clubs, and so on. At this time, the
majority of the *new* clubs being chartered are 'company clubs', i.e. clubs
chartered at and meeting at businesses and organizations, in many cases
open only to employees or members of those organizations. Never fear,
however; there are thousands of community clubs already in existence as
well.
If you'd like to visit a club meeting, simply telephone Toastmasters
International World Headquarters at (714) 858-8255 or 1-800-Y-We-Speak and
ask for the locations of the clubs near you. Alternately, drop a postcard
to TI WHQ, P.O. Box 9052,
Mission Viejo CA
92690 and ask for
the local clubs' listings. You may be VERY surprised by how many clubs
there are in your area. Quite a few clubs don't get around to advertising
in the newspaper.
Complete listings for all clubs in the world can be found at http://www.toastmasters.org
If you cannot access the World Wide Web, send email to clubs@toastmasters.org and ask;
be sure to include your postal address so the information can be mailed to
you.
If you live in Canada,
you can click on the Canadian Flag on your left and obtain information
about clubs in Canada.
Usually no.
If you're visiting a community club, it might not be a bad idea to let
them know you're coming so they can tell you any details like what time
members arrive to eat and what time members who don't come to eat arrive,
but community clubs are almost always open to all and they'll be delighted
to have you come to the meeting.
Clubs that meet at companies and organizations, on military bases, or in
prisons are often, but not always, restricted to members or employees of
the sponsoring body. These clubs are happy to have guests but you sometimes
need to call ahead to get through security or to find out specifically
where the club meets.
Unlike some other organizations, where one must have a sponsoring member
who invites you to the meeting and introduces you to the group,
Toastmasters welcomes all guests. If the club is open to membership from
the community, you will usually be offered a membership application at the
end of the meeting.
Club 31 is open to all, feel free to visit any of our meetings.
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.
In general, though, you'll find two types of clubs: those that have a
meal with their meetings and those that don't. Clubs that have a meal with
their meeting may charge their members for the meals in advance and pay the
restaurant in one lump sum or may have members order off the menu. Since
breakfast and lunch clubs are popular with the business community, you can
often kill two birds with one stone by joining Toastmasters: educating
yourself and having a meal with business associates. You'll also find some
clubs that get meeting space by having dinner before their meetings -- and
half the members wait until dinner is over to arrive. There's infinite
variety to it all. This is one good reason to call in advance.
Many clubs do *not* have meals with their meetings, though. Quite a few
clubs meet after dinnertime in a public meeting room at a bank or library
or at a church, have their meeting, and go home.
The format varies slightly from club to club, but the basics include:
- the business meeting
(usually very brief)
- 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 (of which more below)
- impromptu speeches
from members (also known as Table Topics, of which more below)
- oral evaluations of
the prepared speeches (of which more below)
- 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).
Sheridan Park Club meetings usually lasts two hours (7:00pm to
9:00pm).
When you join Toastmasters (see the "Membership" FAQ) 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.
In the basic ("Communication and Leadership"
manual), there are ten speech projects:
- . Icebreaker - 4 to
6 minutes - getting over nervousness by introducing yourself to the
club.
- . Be In Earnest - 5
to 7 minutes - continue to get over nervousness by speaking about
something you believe deeply in.
- . Organize Your
Speech - 5 to 7 minutes - work on giving a well-organized speech.
- . Show What You Mean
- 5 to 7 minutes - not a "Show and Tell" speech, this
project calls on you to work with gestures and body language during
your speech. Unfortunately, many members somehow confuse the issue and
show up with a bag full of props that they use in a "Show and
Tell" style speech. Don't do that.
- . Vocal Variety - 5
to 7 minutes - work on rate of delivery, volume, speed, pitch,
emphasis, etc.
- . Work with Words -
5 to 7 minutes - work on proper word choice, avoiding jargon and
generalizations, etc.
- . Apply Your Skills
- 5 to 7 minutes - go back and practice everything you've learned up
to this point.
- . Be Persuasive - 6
to 8 minutes - give a persuasive speech on a controversial issue.
- . Speak With
Knowledge - 7 minutes, plus or minus 30 seconds - research an issue,
write a speech, and then *read* that speech to the audience (as
opposed to using notecards or notes or whatever you used for the
previous eight speeches)... and have it well-rehearsed, so it doesn't
run long or end too soon.
- . Inspire Your
Audience - 8 to 10 minutes - The final speech in the manual calls on
you to move and inspire your audience in a well-presented and
well-prepared speech.
As you can see, all ten projects above are wide-open for you to choose
whatever topic you like. Even if you pick a controversial subject, most
Toastmasters audiences will evaluate you on how well you presented your
subject, not on whether they agreed with you or not.
For further information about the speaking program, see the
"Educational Advancement FAQ."
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.").
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.
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.
The only times you're actually *penalized* for going over or under time
is in speaking competition; in speech contests (see the "Contests
FAQ") you must remain within the interval or be disqualified.
Some clubs 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.
Sheridan Park TM Club votes at every meeting for "best Table
Topic speaker", "best Speaker", and "best
Evaluator".
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.
EVERYONE is afraid of speaking. In poll after poll, "public
speaking" comes up as more feared than "death." Public
speaking is the nation's #1 fear. You are no different. Even if you think
you're really good at speaking, there will come times when your heart stops
and your palms sweat and you freeze before an audience. Toastmasters can
help with that.
Remember that EVERYONE in a Toastmasters club is there because at some
point they realized they needed help communicating and speaking before
audiences. Almost everyone will remember how wretched they felt when they
gave their first speech. You may be startled to find out how supportive a
Toastmasters club really can be. [The author of this FAQ recruited a friend
to Toastmasters who was so overwrought and nervous that she sobbed as if
her heart was broken after her first speech. Ditto for the second. Some
tears after the third. Eventually she realized that we weren't going to eat
her alive and she came to enjoy it. By the time she earned her CTM, she
consistently won "best speaker" votes at our meetings.]
If you're aware how nervous you are but aren't convinced that you should
do anything about it, stop and think what skill is more important than any
other when it comes to getting and keeping a good job?
Think you're already an excellent speaker? People who think they're
really good sometimes come into Toastmasters and find out how unstructured
and sloppy they really are. Being comfortable doesn't mean that you're
actually GOOD. Even if you ARE good, you can always get better.
Toastmasters can give you a lot of skills and keep good speakers improving.
If you still don't know whether you'd like Toastmasters, why not visit a
meeting? If you still don't think it's your cup of tea, we'll still be
happy you came by.
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.
For-profit courses such as Dale Carnegie can be very good for their
participants. They also cost a lot and when they're over, they're over.
Toastmasters costs a lot less and it can last a lifetime.
- See the Membership
FAQ, the Educational Advancement FAQ, the Leadership and Organization
FAQ, and the Speech Contests FAQ.
- Ask questions in
alt.org.toastmasters.
- Write the poster of
this FAQ.
- Call Toastmasters
International at 1-714-858-8255 or 1-800-Y-We-Speak.
- Write Toastmasters
International at P.O. Box 9052, Mission Viejo, California, 92690-7052.
If you need to send email to department heads at TI World Headquarters,
thier addresses are on the web site listed below (although be warned that
not every person listed below regularly checks their email -- some are more
accustomed to the Internet than others. If it's important, send a letter
through the regular mail.)
Current contact information for Toastmasters International is available
at their website: http://www.toastmasters.org/contact.htm
For current contact information for District 60: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~pnagle/district60/
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