Bill SituClub President Public speaking is the skill that most people flock to Toastmasters to learn. As such, we're launching this new series on Friendlies' Corner titled #friendliesspeak! Here, we'll offer speaking advice to help you hone in on this skill. Welcome to the first instalment! Why I BlogIf you've been following this blog thus far, you'll probably know that I majored in English. Not surprisingly, I've had a love affair with writing for a long time <3 During university, writing essays was the bread and butter of my academic life. Outside of my coursework, I also wrote for the school newspaper and for various websites. Currently, I teach English, and therefore spend a fair amount of time teaching students how to write. This blog, since its creation, has given me a public outlet to share ideas about topics related to Toastmasters. However, there is another important reason as to why I blog. Namely, it is to help me better organize ideas that I might just use in future speeches. Writing, like speaking, serves the essential purpose of communicating ideas. Written and spoken communication each has its own distinct advantages. Still, there is one way in which the former is particularly useful for improving the latter. Verbal communication is spontaneous in nature, which doesn't allow for much forethought or revision. As such, incoherence is often characteristic of spoken communication. On the other hand, with writing, you have the chance to revise your ideas as much as necessary until you are satisfied. This then enables you to better communicate your ideas in spoken form when the time comes. Preparing for Impromptu SpeakingA table topics session at an open-house event last Thanksgiving It goes without saying that writing ideas down is an essential step for prepared speeches. However, writing is also especially helpful for impromptu speaking.
Impromptu speaking happens at every Toastmasters meeting in the form of a table topics session. In this section, a table topics master asks questions related to the meeting theme, to which members and guests step up to the stage and deliver a speech to answer. Table topics may be designed for impromptu speaking, but it doesn't actually have to be. There have been times in the past where I was fully prepared to speak on a specific table topics question. The most recent one was just this past meeting. The question that the table topics master asked was "What was your best/worst movie you've ever seen?" Having previously written on the topic of how unrealistic martial arts movies are, I decided to speak about this. In real-life, an important time when impromptu speaking skills come into play is during job interviews. Surely, you'll never be able to know the questions in advance. Still, there are some fairly standard questions that employers often ask. In my experience, taking the time to write out responses to such questions has proven particularly helpful for me when preparing for an upcoming interview. In fact, you would have had a chance to organize your responses on paper when you wrote your CV and cover letter to the employer! To be clear, I'm not trying to say that writing frequently by itself will make you an immaculate impromptu speaker. Still, it will help! Hopefully, I've managed to convince you to take up writing as a means to improve speaking :) If you found this post helpful, then stayed tuned for the next instalment of #richmondfriendlyspeakers! We'll be covering how to best draft a speech!
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