As we approach the start of contest season here are a few ideas that could help you and your club to maximise your Toastmasters educational opportunity over the coming weeks both as a contestant and as contest functionaries.
Contestant
For those of you taking part in the Humorous Speech contest, I would strongly recommend that you follow the Toastie maxim that “Every Speech should be a Manual Speech”. Providing that the speech you deliver meets the objectives of a manual speech, so long as the speech evaluated to these objectives and written into your manual, there is no reason why the speech can not count towards a CC or Advanced award. A further benefit is that delivering any speech can count towards projects 4 or 5 from the CL manual.
For those lucky enough to win at a club contest, when you deliver the same speech at the next level you can also have the speech evaluated for another project providing once again that the objectives of the project are met and that you incorporate the recommendations from the earlier evaluation. For example a speech evaluated for the club contest against the objectives of Project 6 Vocal Variety, could also be evaluated against the objectives of Project 8 Getting Comfortable with Visual Aids if the objectives of both are met.
For table topic contestants if you haven’t already done so why not have someone evaluate you for project 1 of the CL award.
Functionaries
Helping to organise a club speech contest, either for your own club or for another club, in some capacity (except contest chair) e.g. Chief Judge, SAA can be used to fulfil the requirements of project 6 of the CL award.
For those of you who are contest chair you could be evaluated against the objectives from 2 of the elements of CL project 8 or 1 from CL project 10. Being a Contest Chair on more than 1 occasion can help you speed through the CL award.
For a club to really maximise the opportunity, the two contests should be treated separately and different Contest Chairs appointed enabling more members to satisfy the CL requirements.
The key component to these ideas is meeting the objectives of the project that you are undertaking. You need to read what you are required to do in advance so that you can satisfy yourself that you are following the programme correctly and most importantly that you have your manual with you on the night to have the written evaluation completed correctly.
As Toastmasters we all know that Stage time is a valuable commodity. If you maximise all the opportunity available to you over the next few weeks you will be able to make great strides towards becoming a Competent Leader, Competent Communicator or an Advanced Communicator.
