I enjoyed the session tremendously as we had a great time listening, laughing and losing ourselves in Patrick’s stories, anecdotes and quotations that encouraged us to take advantage of toastmasters to prepare, practice and present our speeches so that we can improve and become better speakers!

One key takeaway from his session was that it was more blessed to give than to receive. In giving generously, we reap the benefits in so many other different ways. When we teach in learn!

Patrick ended the session with a parting note… For us to leverage on the power of mentoring to share, learn and grow together. A meaningful and valueful workshop by a very fluent speaker!

I was at the Punggol Rivervale Toastmasters club yesterday evening and was struck by Handi’s (picture on the right) use of visual aids for his Project 8. I was his evaluator and I specifically praised him for his innovative use of a long piece of paper marked in intervals of five years to depict literally the length of time in years that an average person lives.

Handi used that prop very appropriately to demonstrate how life is short and what takes up major chunks of our life. It was related to speech titled “Life is short, seize it!”

I asked him after the meeting if he had thought up of this technique himself and he told me that he read it up on the internet. It was still an effective way of illustrating how our lives can be measured in terms of the length of time and use the paper to show how bits of it is used for growing up, growing old and the remainder is our productive time.

What then do we do with the bit in the middle?

How thought-provoking!

I learn something new at each toastmasters meeting! Wouldn’t you want to learn something new too?

The north-eastern part of Singapore saw the meeting of the Punggol Rivervale Toastmasters Club where speakers did project 8 visual aids covering topics relating to “Difficult digital video recording” to “Life is short, seize the day” as well as project 9 persuasive speaking. An advanced project 2 from the speak to inform manual (resources for informing) was also delivered.

Table-topics included:

• You are what you think you are (used in District 80 contest 2007)
• The pen is mightier than the sword (used in Division B contest 2007)
• Less is more (used in Area B2 contest 2007)

The group was small but the spirit was strong as toastmasters from the club gamely moved one step closer to achieving their Competent Communicator awards. Thanks goes to Dex Yuen from Braddell Heights Toastmasters Club as well as Kampong Glam toastmasters club for gracing the occasion as a project evaluator. It was an enjoyable meeting filled with fun, fellowship and freedom to learn, enjoy and grow together in toastmasters!

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www.flickr.com panzergrenadier’s Toastmasters – Rivervale Punggol TMC photoset

Highlights of the meeting
The meeting featured some very good toastmasters. Geok Cheng from NTU Alumni Toastmasters presented a Toast from the Speciality Speeches Advanced Manual amid the basic projects done by the dedicated members of the Singhealth toastmasters club! CL Sau Ying who was suffering from flu still braved her illness to deliver a cogent and succinct evaluation for her fellow club member! Experienced evaluators like Seh Leng and my fellow club member Annabelle also graced the occasion.

Table-Topics
The table-topics covered included quotes from sages, examples included:

• Shoes tell a person’s personality
• Knowledge is power
• All man by nature desires knowledge
• Great thinking precedes great deeds
• Nothing in life is to be feared, it is to be understood
• Be vigilant, guard your mind against negative thoughts

Language Evaluator’s brief report
The Club Vice-President Education Tamil had invited me to be the language evaluator for this meeting and I thoroughly enjoyed myself with the role. The word of the evening chosen by me was “heart” and I extolled the members to use the word as its literal, figurative and idiomatic meanings. Many of the speakers rose up to the challenge and used the word of the evening liberally but correctly in their speeches.

Most of the members spoke well and I detected more good use of the English language compared to abuses! The President of the Club, Flora was most eloquent in her well-prepared opening address and she has one of the most precise articulation that I can hear in a toastmaster.

I could hear only some minor issues to be corrected, including:

• Pronunciation: “conclude” – to pronounce as “kern” instead of “corn”; “drought” – to pronounce as “drout” vs. “draft”
• Grammatical issues – plural vs. singular verbs
• Use of colloquial terms – the “sh*t” word was used

Good people good meeting
The Singhealth toastmasters club is made up of warm and friendly members who take the commitment to attend club meetings and to deliver their projects to the best of their abilities. I salute their dedication and was glad to have participated in their meeting which featured excellent nasi-lemak dinner with chicken nuggets, otah, fishball, pickled vegetables and sambal chilli! Good food, good toastmaster, a very powerful combination!

Won’t you take the step to visit a toastmasters club today?

I realised that there are people searching for language evaluation resources out in the internet and even before I plunged into the language evaluator’s role some time ago, I too wanted to find out as much as I could before I took it on. However, there wasn’t much to go on and I took the plunge after experiencing some very good language evaluators such as Distinguished Toastmaster Mr. Richard Sng from Brilliant Advanced Toastmasters Club and other evaluators.

Simple Structured Sample of a 10-minute language evaluation
I will share what I typically use in my own language evaluations. It is not the model answer that we in Singapore are so fond of but it has worked for me so far as a structure in which you can comment intelligently about the use of English during a toastmasters meeting.

1. Greetings: I start my presentation by greeting the president, district officers (if any), fellow toastmasters ladies and gentlemen.
2. Explain to guests what the role of the language evaluator:
1. To comment on good use of English
1. To comment on inappropriate use
1. To offer suggestions on how we can improve
3. Good use of english (As a language evaluator, you must be very attentive to capture and classify what you hear into the categories that make sense to the audience)
1. Vivid use of language e.g. His ego shattered into a million shards of self-consciousness
2. Metaphors e.g. He hammered the point home by reiterating the key argument.
3. Similes e.g. As right as rain
4. Power of three e.g. He took his explanation, hook, line and sinker.
5. Alliteration e.g. Her assured aura permeated through the entire room.
6. Rhymes e.g. The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain.
4. Inappropriate use
1. Colloquialism e.g. You guys want to hear about this?
1. Singlish e.g. After he entered the room, he on the light.
1. Grammar e.g. Last night he goes to the supermarket.
1. Plural/singular e.g. There are many toastmaster in the room.
2. Objectionable expressions e.g. filthy rich
3. Pronunication e.g. tree vs. three
5. Conclude
1. I usually try to conclude positively with a tip e.g. use Merriam Webster online as you can hear the pronunciation of words over the internet

To start, you don’t have to be good
To be good, you have to start
My good friend Patrick Chang likes to use the phrase above and I’ll reproduce it here for the benefit of budding closet language evaluators who think they want to take the plunge. Language evaluation is not for everyone but if you are reasonably fluent in the English language, can speak grammatical sentences 99% of the time and have the confidence to listen well and to be able to comment why the sentence you heard is inappropriate or breaks certain grammar rules or is just not suitable in a formal toastmasters meeting, you might just be the next language evaluator we can tap on!

I do not claim to be an expert in this area as I too am constantly learning from better language evaluators and better speakers. But I learnt that important line from Patrick… You have to start somewhere.

All the best in your language evaluation journey!

These four words are powerful if you can internalise them. They appear so deceptively simple, but it is the simple things in life that are the most difficult to do well.

Why do I say this?

Communication is part of our humanity
To speak well is to communicate well. Speaking comes naturally to human beings. Most children when they reach the age where they can talk, will start to progress from their babbling to childish bantering to speaking and then to talking, talking and talking (non-stop!) Parents who are reading this and have their children along running and making a lot of noise and talking would wish for their children to stay silent, at least for a little while while daddy or mommy can think for a while in silence.

But speaking is only one part of the human equation. The other part is listening. To speak well and connect to the other party is also to listen well. Speaking is not lecturing. Speaking is not talking down to people. Speaking is not a one-way street. To be able to touch another person’s heart, mind and soul, we need to pause after we speak to allow the other person to speak.

Learning the hard way
My spouse and I learnt this the hard way. When we first had our conversations, I was listening for information when I should be listening for empathy, for emotion and for love. When she spoke, she was pouring out her emotions, she didn’t want solutions to perceived problems! Ha! The power of active listening, to not only listen to the words and meaning, but to listen to the emotions and sometimes the nuances of the conversation. How do we learn to do this? How do we take baby steps to truly train our ears to hear, to really really hear?

Active listening starts with practice
To be able to listen well, you have to practice. I have learnt from my toastmastering activity to really listen well because I have done many project evaluations. For the benefit of those who do not know toastmastering terms, a “project” is a speech in toastmasters lingo. So what I have done is to listen to many speeches and to give verbal and oral feedback to the speaker in a constructive and positive manner. What happens in a speech evaluation is that the speaker will deliver a 5 to 7 minute speech according to the objectives of the basic communication manual developed by Toastmasters International. The appointed evaluator, will listen to the speech, note down how the speaker has (or has not!) met the project objectives, areas that the speaker has done well, areas where the speaker can improve and other suggestions.

Practice is available at toastmasters
In order for you to give an effective evaluation, you must be able to listen well and listen attentively! This requires you to look out for the speech structure, content, delivery, vocal
variety, body gestures, confidence and whether the speaker has met the project objectives. You then need to write all these down, identify the key points to highlight to the speaker and then deliver an oral (followed by verbal) evaluation as a speech for 2-3 minutes.

My own life has been enriched because toastmasters makes me feel alive and connected to my fellow human being. In our fast paced, frentic and furiously stressful life that is Singapore, take time out to connect so that you can be a better speaker, live a better life.

Listen well. Speak well. Live well.

Have you ever received unsolicted emails, flyers or brochures advertising training courses before?

Receiving training flyers and brochures
I’m sure many of you have received such invitations! Some of them are quality courses, some of them are mediocre but most of them costs considerable amounts of monies.

In my organisation, the fax machine regular spits out unsolicted faxes to attend public communication courses for about $400-$500 a day conducted by overseas trainers. That’s the going rate for attending professional courses on how to be a better speaker and communicator.

Open secret about where to get value-for-money training
Here’s a open secret I would like to share with you about public speaking and communication training. You can avail yourself to quality training by experienced public speakers (and many are full-time trainers by profession!) for as little as $0.50 per day! For the price of less than a cup of coffee or tea, you can be trained by experienced toastmasters by joining a toastmasters club!

Why join toastmasters
If you ever have a problem:

• articulating your ideas to your boss, supervisor or colleague;
• explaining something to your spouse, children or family member;
• convincing someone of the validity of your ideas, your approach, your method;
• standing in front of your customers, clients or business partners;
• making a thank-you or acceptance speech at a dinner, a function or a wedding

Join toastmasters!

I can say, sincerely from the bottom of my heart, this is not a marketing gimmick or ruse. I have been a toastmaster for close to 5 years and I have moved from being a Competent Toastmaster to a Competent Leader to a Advanced Communicator Bronze. I have participated in Humourous Speech Contests, Evaluation Contests, International Speech contests. And I have won contests at the Club, the Area, the Division and competed among the best in Asia at the district for the Table-Topics contest.

Toastmasters provides value-for-money training
Toastmasters works and is a value-for-money programme that teaches you:

• Fundamentals of public speaking
• Overcoming fear of speaking in front of an audience
• How to think on your feet and respond to virtually any topic that is thrown at you
• The secret to crafting any type of speech
• How to capture the audience’s attention
• And much, much more

So long as you are serious about becoming a better speaking. So long as you are willing to invest at least once a month (if not more often) to attend a club meeting. So long as you are willing to attend so many education workshops on public communication and leadership for as low as $8 for a 2 hour workshop, toastmasters is for you!

Special offer for visitors to fivecentstencents blog
I invite all visitors to my blog to attend the Open Alumni Toastmasters Club‘s Education Workshop on THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING at a discounted rate. Just quote this code word “fivecentstencents.blogspot.com” and you can bring along a friend to this meeting free-of-charge (buy 1 get 1 free!). To register, email to speaking.life at gmail.com with your name and contact number and we will reserve a seat for you!

Part I: THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

• Learn the skills and techniques of public speaking to boost your career and life
• Learn how to control the butterflies within you to impress, persuade and to inspire

Part II: THE ART OF CONFIDENT LIVING

• Learn about skills and techniques of living confidently
• Learn about how to expand your life exponentially

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Patrick Chang, currently the Membership Director of Asia Professional Speakers – Singapore, is a public speaking trainer with more than 20 years of training experience. He is the founder of SimplySpeaking, an organisation specialising in public speaking and presentation training. In 1998, Patrick began providing public speaking training and has since trained more than 1000 participants including students, undergraduates, school parent volunteers, teachers, corporate executives, business owners, statutory boards, MNCs, community clubs and toastmasters clubs.

Date: 14 June 2007 (Thursday)
Place: The Corporate Office
(Near Tanjong Pagar MRT and Raffles Place MRT)
Level 9, Great Wall Room
138 Robinson Road
Singapore 068906
Time: 7.30 pm to 9.30 pm
Investment: $8 only (Each paying participant can bring 1 friend for FREE! Just quote fivecentstencents.blogspot.com)
(Light Refreshments will be served)

Have you ever received unsolicted emails, flyers or brochures advertising training courses before?

Receiving training flyers and brochures
I’m sure many of you have received such invitations! Some of them are quality courses, some of them are mediocre but most of them costs considerable amounts of monies.

In my organisation, the fax machine regular spits out unsolicted faxes to attend public communication courses for about $400-$500 a day conducted by overseas trainers. That’s the going rate for attending professional courses on how to be a better speaker and communicator.

Open secret about where to get value-for-money training
Here’s a open secret I would like to share with you about public speaking and communication training. You can avail yourself to quality training by experienced public speakers (and many are full-time trainers by profession!) for as little as $0.50 per day! For the price of less than a cup of coffee or tea, you can be trained by experienced toastmasters by joining a toastmasters club!

Why join toastmasters
If you ever have a problem:

• articulating your ideas to your boss, supervisor or colleague;
• explaining something to your spouse, children or family member;
• convincing someone of the validity of your ideas, your approach, your method;
• standing in front of your customers, clients or business partners;
• making a thank-you or acceptance speech at a dinner, a function or a wedding

Join toastmasters!

I can say, sincerely from the bottom of my heart, this is not a marketing gimmick or ruse. I have been a toastmaster for close to 5 years and I have moved from being a Competent Toastmaster to a Competent Leader to a Advanced Communicator Bronze. I have participated in Humourous Speech Contests, Evaluation Contests, International Speech contests. And I have won contests at the Club, the Area, the Division and competed among the best in Asia at the district for the Table-Topics contest.

Toastmasters provides value-for-money training
Toastmasters works and is a value-for-money programme that teaches you:

• Fundamentals of public speaking
• Overcoming fear of speaking in front of an audience
• How to think on your feet and respond to virtually any topic that is thrown at you
• The secret to crafting any type of speech
• How to capture the audience’s attention
• And much, much more

So long as you are serious about becoming a better speaking. So long as you are willing to invest at least once a month (if not more often) to attend a club meeting. So long as you are willing to attend so many education workshops on public communication and leadership for as low as $8 for a 2 hour workshop, toastmasters is for you!

Special offer for visitors to fivecentstencents blog
I invite all visitors to my blog to attend the Open Alumni Toastmasters Club‘s Education Workshop on THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING at a discounted rate. Just quote this code word “fivecentstencents.blogspot.com” and you can bring along a friend to this meeting free-of-charge (buy 1 get 1 free!).

Part I: THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

• Learn the skills and techniques of public speaking to boost your career and life
• Learn how to control the butterflies within you to impress, persuade and to inspire

Part II: THE ART OF CONFIDENT LIVING

• Learn about skills and techniques of living confidently
• Learn about how to expand your life exponentially

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Patrick Chang, currently the Membership Director of Asia Professional Speakers – Singapore, is a public speaking trainer with more than 20 years of training experience. He is the founder of SimplySpeaking, an organisation specialising in public speaking and presentation training. In 1998, Patrick began providing public speaking training and has since trained more than 1000 participants including students, undergraduates, school parent volunteers, teachers, corporate executives, business owners, statutory boards, MNCs, community clubs and toastmasters clubs.

Date: 14 June 2007 (Thursday)
Place: The Corporate Office
(Near Tanjong Pagar MRT and Raffles Place MRT)
Level 9, Great Wall Room
138 Robinson Road
Singapore 068906
Time: 7.30 pm to 9.30 pm
Investment: $8 only (Each paying participant can bring 1 friend for FREE! Just quote fivecentstencents.blogspot.com)
(Light Refreshments will be served)

The gentlemen on the right-hand side picture is Mr. William Lim. He is a trainer and an author of a book, “Are You with Me” on public communication. He is a very humourous person and loves to pepper his speeches with humour. His smile radiates warmth throughout the room!

In the toastmasters calendar, September and October is the period for speech contests and the upcoming speech contests will be focussed on humourous speeches as well as evaluations.

Writing a humourous speech is challenging
Coming up with a humourous speech is difficult. This is coming from a 5 year veteran of the toastmasters movement. I also use humour in my speech, but more often than not, the humour is not scripted. I happen to have a natural conversational style that lends itself to be perceived as humourous even when that was not my intention. That is the crux of writing and delivering a humourous speech. How to be funny, on cue!

Resources on the internet via google
I googled “How to write a humorous speech” and goggle threw up the following article by Steve Pavlina. His article shares some techniques about using humour in speaking situations and surprise, surprise, he is also a toastmaster. Imagine that!

From his blog, I managed to find another useful reference online Humour Power. This blog contains useful snippets of information about how we can use humour in presentations. Okay, enough of me telling you what other people wrote. So what is my take on how we can write a humourous speech? To save you time and effort in ploughing through these websites, let me summarise the key pointers they offer for speakers who want to write and then deliver a powerfully humourous speech:

5 tips on writing a humourous speech on cue

1) Play on words / abbreviation
Words have different meanings and this can be exploited for fun. The example given in the Humour Power blog is where the tour guide in a movie “Vegas Vacation” starring Chevy Chase was giving the family a tour of Hoover dam, and he tells them that he is their “dam tour guide” with the wordplay on “dam” vs. “damn”. The humour is that it sounds like the tour guide is swearing when he is not.

Closer to home, Patrick made a joke when he introduced me as he said I was a old friend of his, and he went on to say, “I’m the one who is old not him!” which drew lots of laughs from the toastmasters present.

I’d like to add my own variation in that you can play with abbreviations and this works well in Singapore because this is a land that also loves abbreviations. Take this sentence.

“You can take the PIE, exit CTE and connect to the BKE you should be on the right direction.”

If you are not a Singaporean resident, you would not understand what it means at all as those abbreviations relate to names of expressways or highways in Singapore. (PIE=Pan Island Expressway, CTE=Central Expressway, BKE=Bukit Timah Expressway)

Last night at the AIA Alexandra Toastmasters meeting, Patrick Chang made a joke about the 3M which stands for the “Medisave, Medishield and Medifund” framework in public health. However, Patrick changed that to “Make More Money” and it was hilarious because we were in a room full of financial planners and other entrepreneurs so most of us caught the joke. ))

2) Self-deprecate
William also used the technique of self-deprecation. He was evaluating Clifford Heng’s speech from the story telling manual, a folktale, where Clifford told the story of the “Three Little Pigs” albeit with a modern twist. William made a joke about himself being one of the pigs during the course of the session and it was quite funny too.

3) Exaggeration
I used this technique in last year’s humourous speech contest where I won at the Area B2 level for my speech on the Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT). Some of my club members can still remember that speech! Over there, I exaggerated the movements of the various test stations of this test which is the annual fitness test that all Singaporean reservists have to go through when they are still on reservist status. You can also exaggerate a point. In my speech, I exaggerated the distance one had to run by saying,

“And to top it all off, you need to run not 2.4 cm, not 240 m but 2.4 killllooooometers from here to far far away!”

That elicited some laughs from the audience.

4) Vary your vocal speed
At the District 80 Toastmasters Hong Kong annual convention, the winner of the International Speech Contest Eddie used plenty of humour even though the contest was not a humourous speech contest. At one stage, he varied his speaking pace by speaking fast and that made him sound quite funny because when you speak fast people usually think that’s pretty comical.

5) Connect with the audience
The best humour comes by relating and connecting with the audience. Find something topical in the news, inside or around the room of the meeting so that you can use the information about the place and incorporate it into a joke or something humourous that can be weaved into your speech.

Writing and delivering humourous speeches can be challenging, especially for those who are not by nature, humourous. I wish you all the best in your efforts to write and deliver that humour-packed speech!

My evaluator on the right gave me a fair evaluation. Overall, I presented my speech pretty much according to the written version in the earlier post. In terms of delivery and confidence, the speech was effective in meeting the objectives. Cher Khim had three recommendations for me.

Recommendations by the project evaluator
Firstly, he suggested that I used a flipchart or used a whyteboard to jot down the 3 steps in overcoming procrastination (or eating your frog!) which were:

1. Determine your goals and set a plan
2. Prioritise: use the 80-20 rule or ABCDE method
3. Motivate yourself into action

This was to help refer the audience to the points articulated in my speech and acts as a visual aid to help memory retention.

Secondly, he suggested a call to action for my conclusion. I had only asked the audience to eat that frog but should have spelt it out clearer to them to go back, make a list of their goals and set about planning their activities to the methods described.

Thirdly, my evaluator also thought the speech would have more impact if I used my own experience in using Brian Tracy’s methods in overcoming procrastination to connect to the audience better.

His observations were very useful and I will use them to deliver an even more powerful AP2 – Resources for Informing from the Speak to Inform manual.

A call to action
If you are reading my post and you are curious to find out what toastmasters is about, leave a comment with a contact email/number and I will invite you to visit us as a guest, no obligations.

If you never try, how do you know you’d love it or hate it?

PS
The remarkable lady, Choo Choo below won the best speaker award. Congratulations and kudos.