19 May 2016 chapter meeting synopsis

By Katong TMC - June 12, 2016

19 May 2016 marks a special occasion for Katong Toastmasters Club. We celebrated our 11th Anniversary with a special theme UNITY IN DIVERSITY.

Club President Aarti in her opening address opines that an anniversary is a time to reflect and rejoice. She is happy to see our club members thriving under the guidance of mentors. When she joined Katong TMC, she wanted to learn how to be a better speaker but along the way, she learnt so many other things such as running a 5km race and mindfulness to become a better mother.

PREPARED SPEECHES

In her P2 speech, Rosalind spoke about My experience as a local tourist . She recounted her exploration of the park connector network, in particular the Labrador nature park reserve. She considers it a gem, a hidden secret. Every tree has a story and some trees in the park are older than her. She enjoyed the peace and quietness at the park and gave vivid descriptions of what she saw there.

Ben presented his P5 speech Your Body Speaks entitled Talking about Nothing. He recalls the Seinfeld comedy sitcom that drew laughs by focusing on the minutiae of everyday life, such as finding a parking lot. He compares this to everyday conversations where we often engage in platitudes at work, or in Toastmasters.

Rajendra presented AP2 Resources for Entertainment from the Entertaining Speaker Manual. In his speech entitled From the contest, he recounted how his first meeting to Katong TMC was an Area contest. He was so enamoured by he saw and heard that he became a lifetime member of the club. After taking part in many speech contests, he is now an expert in spotting judges and tells us how this is done.

Leena enchanted and inspired us with her motivational speech Just Get Up and Dance. She shared about how she was able to fulfil her dream to learn dance despite initial obstacles and urge all of us to continue to pursue our dreams. This was a speech rehearsal for her participation in the District 80 International Speech Contest. We wish her all the best!

TABLE TOPICS

Table Topics Master Ida gave us idioms from different countries. These were some of the topics:

Marshall: Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.

Yau Hong: A bit of fragrance always cling to the hand that gives roses

Swapna: From success to failure is one step, from failure to success is a long road.

Erina: Friends double our joy and divide our sorrows.

EVALUATIONS

Peter enjoyed Rosalind's speech and felt it had inspired the audience to want to visit the park through her use of vivid descriptions. He recommended adding a picture or photo of the park to enhance the speech and to summarise the main points in the conclusion of the speech.

Roann liked Ben's speech for its catchy title and introduction using Seinfeld as an analogy. She suggested that Ben could use pauses to signal transitions and re-enactment of conversations to enhance the speech.

Third evaluator Annabelle credited Raj for choosing a familiar topic with jokes and stories pertaining to speech contests. She commended his use of exaggeration, twisted definitions, understatement and parody to create humour in his speech. She felt he could be more fluid and spontaneous.

LANGUAGE EVALUATION

Language evaluator Rosean pointed out words that were mispronounced or missing the 's': overseas, Toastmasters, actually, contributing, asked, I'd = I would, exaggeration.

She highlighted several instances of good use of the language, such as history buff, making walking a breeze, harness the power of talking about nothing, a sparrow watching a bullfight, inner dancer.

She urges all speakers to practice the first sentence with good diction and enunciation.

AWARDS:

Congratulations to all the award winners!

Best Speaker(s) : Rosalind Wong & Rajendra Tiwari (It's a tie!)

Best Table Topics Speaker: Swapna Gayatri

Best Evaluator: Peter Lee