About Toastmasters

At Toastmasters, members learn by doing. Members practice their speaking skill every meeting in a supportive environment. A typical Toastmasters club meets once a week for about an hour. Each meeting gives everyone an opportunity to practice and improve their speaking skills.

A Typical Club Meeting Consists of:

• Brief Business Session
• Prepared Speeches
• Impromptu Speaking Exercise
• Evaluations of Speakers
• Evaluation of Overall Meeting

Presenting prepared speeches.

• Members present speeches based on projects from the Toastmasters International Communication and Leadership Program manuals. Projects cover such topics as speech organization, voice, language, and gestures.
• Every prepared speaker is assigned an evaluator who points out speech strengths and offers suggestions for improvement.

Other meeting roles are speaking opportunities also!

• At every meeting members have the opportunity to practice speaking "off the cuff."
• Members learn how to provide evaluations that motivate and provide constructive feedback. These are opportunities to practice speaking.
• One member serves as Toastmaster of the meeting. The Toastmaster is the "Master of Ceremonies" who conducts the meeting.
• Meeting roles are rotated. Newer members are assigned easier roles and learn progressively more challenging ones over time.
• The key to the program is continuous improvement through speaking briefly every week, month in and month out. In this way, you learn by doing, and your skill level improves in a way that really lasts. Sound like a lot of work? Perhaps, but it's fun, too! The time commitment is normally one hour per week: the meeting itself. When you have special assignments (e.g. a prepared speech), then allow four hours of preparation time.

About Toastmasters International.

Toastmasters International is a non-profit organization established in1924, in Santa Ana, California, by Dr. Ralph C. Smedley, who conceived and developed the idea of helping others to speak more effectively. More clubs were formed, and now is a world-wide organization.

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