Angela Lansbury presenting How To Structure A Speech workshop. Photo from Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
I presented a workshop on How To Structure A Speech to students at Singapore's ITE technical college. The college teaches students of engineering, hospitality and management.
Speechcraft is a condensed course on public speaking, intended to attract students or adults to commit
to attending the Toastmasters International programme, which is usually held weekly for one evening. (Sometimes schools and businesses meet in the morning or afternoon, or later afternoon after classes.)
What Is A Gavel Club
A Gavel Club is a club for under 18s. Such clubs are usually started in schools and colleges. Why are they separate from adults clubs?
1 Students at school or college like to be with their friends and their own age group.
2 The group can be run by their teachers and / or outsiders.
3 The students are taught in their familiar environment, their campus, no stress or cost of travelling.
4 The activity can help them confidently write and construct their course work.
5 It can help them pass exams.
6 It can help them present to classmates in lessons.
7 The training helps with speaking at work meetings during work experience, job interviews, and confidence in their first job.
8 It helps with confidence during the stresses of adolescence, a new school or college, gaining confidence to make friends and start relationships and pep talks which help optimism before exams and coping with the ups and downs or breakdowns of romances.
9 Why not just send students to adult clubs?
Children and students often attend adults' clubs.
a) Babies and Toddlers Welcome At Jauhari Toastmasters Club
One club, the Jauhari club, a bilingual English and Malay speaking club, where you can present a speech in either English or Malay, is a family club. Mothers and parents with babies and tiny children can be bring along children, so children are familiar with the idea of public speaking and young parents or grandparents do not have to stay at home childminding.
This tends to disrupt the meeting and distract speakers and the audience. However, the people who run the club like it that way. The system works well for them. The management team includes last year's district winner (winner in a contest of all the 200+ clubs in Singapore).
b) School Age Children Welcome
You are asked to call the club and inform them if you are bringing along school age children. This helps the organizers and speakers adapt their material and language and activities.
An otherwise formal meeting with formal language can be adapted.
The children can be acknowledged and welcomed at the beginning, their names learned by the Toastmasters Of The Day.
An interactive table topics session for impromptu speeches can be lengthened so they can all participate. Subjects can be prepared with topics they will know about and on which they can have opinions.
If possible, the toastmasters of The Day, or the Topics Master, will start the meeting by asking, Please, everybody, tell us your name, your current or last school and your favourite subject. When it gets to time for table topics (impromptu speeches), for example, instead of a long complicated question on the 'intervention of government', they could be asked, Do you like wearing school uniform?, or Do you prefer weekdays or weekends? or What Is Your Favourite Sport or Do You prefer to Watch Sport or Join In? The topic can be picked from what they mentioned in their self-introduction.
I imagined that the international organization run from the USA was concerned about the dangers of under age pupils being molested. Just one accusation could damage the reputation of the organixation and its members worldwide.
What if the organizers, who were teachers and already had police clearance, accompanied the children during the meeting and during the mid-meeting toilet break. Supposing the parents delivered and collected the children or accompanied them?
You still could not vet every stranger who turned up at a meeting, nor get their name and address or identity, nor check anybody who walked in late after it started.
Equally, adults might not want to have their pasts investigated. A visiting politican or other VIP guest or speaker might fear the risk of being wrongly accused of molesting a youngster, whether because of mistaken identity, malice, misunderstanding or any other reason.
In the UK one committee opened up the question of whether under 18s should be allowed to attend meetings. Totally different concerns arose. Speech Subjects.
Censored Speeches
Four Letter Words and Language
One speaker wanted to be able to use a four-letter word in a specific speech - or any speech. He also wanted to be able to deliver a speech discussing the use of four-letter words, which would have to be spoken or written on a board.
Speech Subjects
Other speakers wanted to deliver a humorous speech about the difficulties of conceiving, or a humorous speech full of innuendos, which would cause at least embarrassment, at most objections, if children were in the audience. I have seen humorous speeches about underwear, and speeches depending on puns. Even a speech on innuendo in Shakespeare's plays might cause a speaker to self-censor and lost a contest by ending too soon, if children were unexpectedly in the audience.
Now we understand the assorted reasons for a Gavel club, a junior club or cadet club, what is a gavel?
10 What is a Gavel?
The gavel is a wooden hammer used to strike the lectern for attention to open the meeting, and again at the end to signal the end of the meeting.
How to Pronounce Gavel
The word is pronounced 'gav=all' or gav-ill not gave- ell. Short 'a' as in hat, not hate.
You can visit 250 or more adult clubs for speakers in Singapore, and more in the USA, UK, Europe, Arab countries, and most countries of the world. Most clubs are for English speakers, but there are clubs for speakers of French, Spanish, Polish, Chinese, Malay, Tamil, Arabic, and teaching materials in several languages.
More Information From
website toastmasters International
Travel Information
Singapore Airlines
Author
Angela Lansbury is a speaker on language, travel and other subjects, the author of books on wedding speeches and quotations, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts. Contact Angela if you would like a workshop on business English or any other subject for a college or business.
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