Streamline Your Content
There are many things we need to remember to deliver a speech. One of the most important is to remember your purpose. We make speeches for a purpose. Everything in the speech should be used to help achieve that purpose.
The first speaker at this meeting worked on "Writing a Speech with Purpose," a Pathways project focused on how to structure the speech. (Pathways is the educational program of Toastmasters.) He shared his experience climbing mountains and compared it with life. His materials were good and relevant to his purpose. Yet, they could have been used more effectively. One thing he could have done is to streamline his materials. Instead of using many stories and touching on them casually, he could have narrowed them down to only a few and described them in full detail. Materials, if touched upon only casually, cannot support the purpose of the speech. The audience needs to know more in detail to see how they help achieve the purpose of the speech. That is why we want to limit the number of materials used in a speech. His evaluator, Hiro, pointed it out in his evaluation speech.
The second speaker talked about his trip this summer traveling around the Tohoku region by car. He showed us a lot of photos from the trip showing what consequences the Great East Japan Earthquake left. His materials were good and descriptive. Still, there were many materials serving the same purpose, meaning some of them were redundant. Rather, he could have narrowed them down and dug deeper.
Another opportunity to learn
After the meeting, four members had an after-party at a nearby Izakaya place, an event that set us apart. (We normally have more members joining the after-party, but this time people seemed to be busy.)
At the after-party, we talked about the importance of remembering your purpose, narrowing down the materials, and describing them in detail. This kind of interactive and more in-depth conversation can be said to be more effective and educational than an evaluation speech, which inevitably is one-way in nature. At the after-party, we can ask questions and spend far more time than a 2- to 3-minute evaluation speech to deepen our understanding of the points being discussed.
If you are interested in visiting our meeting, make sure you have time to join the after-party as well.
There are many things we need to remember to deliver a speech. One of the most important is to remember your purpose. We make speeches for a purpose. Everything in the speech should be used to help achieve that purpose.
The first speaker at this meeting worked on "Writing a Speech with Purpose," a Pathways project focused on how to structure the speech. (Pathways is the educational program of Toastmasters.) He shared his experience climbing mountains and compared it with life. His materials were good and relevant to his purpose. Yet, they could have been used more effectively. One thing he could have done is to streamline his materials. Instead of using many stories and touching on them casually, he could have narrowed them down to only a few and described them in full detail. Materials, if touched upon only casually, cannot support the purpose of the speech. The audience needs to know more in detail to see how they help achieve the purpose of the speech. That is why we want to limit the number of materials used in a speech. His evaluator, Hiro, pointed it out in his evaluation speech.
The second speaker talked about his trip this summer traveling around the Tohoku region by car. He showed us a lot of photos from the trip showing what consequences the Great East Japan Earthquake left. His materials were good and descriptive. Still, there were many materials serving the same purpose, meaning some of them were redundant. Rather, he could have narrowed them down and dug deeper.
Another opportunity to learn
After the meeting, four members had an after-party at a nearby Izakaya place, an event that set us apart. (We normally have more members joining the after-party, but this time people seemed to be busy.)
At the after-party, we talked about the importance of remembering your purpose, narrowing down the materials, and describing them in detail. This kind of interactive and more in-depth conversation can be said to be more effective and educational than an evaluation speech, which inevitably is one-way in nature. At the after-party, we can ask questions and spend far more time than a 2- to 3-minute evaluation speech to deepen our understanding of the points being discussed.
If you are interested in visiting our meeting, make sure you have time to join the after-party as well.