Back to School! - September 14, 2011

First session in English after holidays! Maybe a good chance to see who has had the chance to practice during holidays? Let's see.

Just after Sergeant Ana Villar had opened the session with a quick but firm hit with the hammer, President Djanira Cortesao took over, welcoming everyone and having the pleasure to introduce quite a few guests who had been visiting us from as far away as Germany and Norway.

Toastmaster Maria del Mont Llosas Losfeld, who gave her debut in that role, professionally explained today’s agenda with a warm and charming smile before introducing us to Timekeeper Riccardo Agostini, Ah-Counter Ana Villar and - last but not least - Grammarian Asun Cabezas.


Ready, steady ... speak!

Javier Macias started with “Tales they tell us” trying to show us how we can analyze our own behavior and the effect it can have on others. Just like in television or movies, everybody consciously or unconsciously plays a role. Be it in the office or in a relationship. The bad guy, the good guy, the innocent girl and many more. The various roles he vividly explained during his speech gave him the perfect opportunity to show us his vocal variety which was one of the main objectives of this talk.

Speaker No. 2, Marion Chevalier, who recently went to a wedding where she did not know anyone except the bride, gave us a useful lesson on how to do networking and get the conversation started in places where you do not know a soul. Lucky us, now that we can put all the strategies into practice without any doubt because as her speech title says  “I tested it for you”.

“DTM or Bust” was the title of Dale Blagrove’s speech who - being an experienced distinguished toastmaster - told us about the long way from first joining Toastmasters to finally receiving that long desired DTM badge. He gave quite a few tips on how to stay motivated: From presenting referral letters to his employer to starting a collection of Toastmaster ribbons which can be perfectly used as bookmarks. Lesson learned: Don’t expect to be a DTM in 2 years if you are still planning to have a private life!

But what would Toastmaster speeches be without evaluations! Tanja Bach, Sue Chien Lee and Joan Fabregat thoroughly analized if each speaker had accomplished his objectives and gently gave tips on areas of improvement.

Then it was David Gonzalez’s turn who challenged the audience as the Table Topics Master of the day proposing some interesting situations in which we have to give a “welcome speech” such as: a new neighbour moving into the house, a university president talking to first semester students (Matthias from Germany) as well as a mayor talking to some high scale investors coming to town (Sonia Rosales). All three of them not only passed with flying colours but also made us laugh out loud.

After calling for the reports from her “crew”, general evaluator Cristine Twarog congratulated Maria del Mont who had successfully jumped in as last-minute-toastmaster and reminded everyone that EasySpeak allows signing up for roles in advance for several sessions in the future.

After confessing that she had just returned from a long holiday and had initially planned to hide in the back row before getting a call from VPE Judith just the day before, Maria del Mont summarized her first time as a toastmaster as a very valuable experience that she would recommend to everyone.

Finally, Djanira took the chance to remind us about
- making the payment for the next semester and (deadline: September 25th)
- the humours speech & table topics competition taking place on September 21st in our club.

See you all next week at the competition!

Tanja Bach