What happens at Toastmasters?

The goal of a Toastmasters club is to provide a supportive and constructive environment in which people can practise public speaking, and develop leadership skills.

This is achieved by having a programme which covers the following areas:

1. Prepared speeches
2. Eduational presentations
3. Impromptu speaking
4. Evaluations and feedback for each speaker
5. Other items related to the development of public speaking skills

If a club member is not actually giving a presentation, they may be asked to take on a leadership role for the meeting such as chairman, timekeeper, or providing topics for the impromptu speaking session.

Everyone at a Toastmasters meeting is given an opportunity to speak in some form or another during the meeting. Public speaking is a practical skill that you can only learn by doing! Sorry folks you can't learn this one by correspondence!

Guests are welcomed on arrival and seated next to an existing club member so that they can ask questions about what is happening in the meeting. Although guests are not required to speak we do encourage them to participate by giving a brief introduction about themselves to the group.

1. Prepared Speeches
Every one who joins Toastmasters is given a selection of helpful notes, which includes a manual outlining 10 simple speeches. The manual provides graduated advice on public speaking and speech techniques to assist you in preparing and presenting those speeches. For example the 5th speech in the manual encourages speakers to experiment with vocal variety. It gives tips and hints on ways you can use your voice to make your speech have more impact or become more interesting.

New members to Toastmasters are often assigned a mentor who can guide them and help them prepare their first few speeches.

Once you have completed all 10 speeches you receive a Competent Toastmaster Award. You can then choose from a range of advanced manuals that are aimed at refining your speaking skills in more specialised areas, or that help you gain further leadership skills.

2. Educationals
Club members who are working towards advanced awards may give an informative presentation to other club members on a variety of topics. Educational topics could include: how to give effective, yet constructive feedback to speakers or perhaps ideas and tricks you can use for impromptu speaking.

3. Impromptu Speaking (otherwise known as Table Topics)
These short 1-2 minute speeches are aimed at giving members an opportunity to develop the skill of being able to think on your feet. These sessions are generally a lot of fun as people come up with all sorts of ideas based on their experiences and different backgrounds

4 Evaluations
One of the main reasons that people join Toastmasters is to become better public speakers. In order to improve, it is useful to gain feedback about where your strengths are and what you still need to work on. This is the aim of evaluations. Everyone who gives a speech is evaluated by one of the other club members. Evaluations have a suggested format that require evaluators to find things to commend the speaker for, as well as recommendations for improvement. The goal of a good evaluation is to instill confidence in the speaker for the things they have done right and inspire them to continue to work on areas that aren't quite working yet.

5 Other Items
Because no one likes a boring, repetitive timetable of events sometimes additional items are added into the programme. These could include such things as fun items, games or a video evening where you can see how you look through the eyes of the camera

Toastmasters also runs competitions in 4 speaking categories throughout the year. These are run firstly at club level and then the winners progress to Area, District and finally National level.