Winning speech on life experiences
Expanding life experiences was the topic of conversation when Barbara Curran claimed two first places at a Toastmasters’ area competition.
Alpine Toastmasters member Curran said she often begins speeches ‘‘with a funny story which always brings people in’’, a tactic she used in the area speech contest in Christchurch last week.
This experience, coupled with her teacher-style speech evaluation, saw her win two of the four categories. She will now compete in the two winning categories at the division level in March.
"I certainly didn’t expect to win both competitions,’’ Curran said. For the prepared speech competition, she had to give a talk up to seven minutes long, on any subject.
‘‘They do tend to be more on the inspirational side, rather than instructional,’’ she said.
Her focus was on the things people do in their jobs that are outside of their job description, such as her experience as a new teacher, when a childtold her they had soiled their pants going down the slide.
‘‘I was looking at the slide and this kid, and thinking ‘this can’t, this can’t be in my job description’.’’
Curran then spoke about people limiting their abilities and lives because of things they think they cannot do, such as not applying for a dream job because they think they will never get it.
‘‘[It’s about] expanding their life description rather than limiting it.’’ She equally showed her teacher experience for the speech evaluation section, which involved everyone, entrants and audience, listening to a speech and then each entrant presenting a two-to-three minute evaluation on it.
Curran said she followed the method of ‘‘commend, recommend, commend’’, so beginning and ending with something positive but giving the person something to work on as well.
‘‘They did the presentation on power point, and I thought they handled it particularly well, as we’ve all seen them done badly.’’
Her recommendation was to have a more attention-grabbing introduction, because theirs was ‘‘very academic’’. Curran believed her wins were partly due to confidence, having been involved with Toastmasters for many years.
This included knowing how to communicate her speech in other ways, including making eye contact, hand gestures, and changing her voice when speaking as the little child in her story, she said.
She will present the same speech at that section of the divisionals, along with evaluating another speech. The other two sections, table topics or the impromptu speech, and a humorous speech, will be competed by their area winners.
If successful in either one or both divisional events in Christchurch, Curran will then move onto the nationals.