The Toastmasters at the Towers club recently held its first speaking contest.
Elizabeth Reed, a Clinical Nutritionist and Pilates Coach of Monroe, and Shvonne Williams, an IT Manager of Ansonia, emerged victorious, claiming the titles of Most Humorous Speech and Best Evaluation respectively.
Every year Toastmaster clubs all over the nation hold club contests to find representatives to continue to the area contest.
For the speech contest, Reed presented her winning speech, “St. Elizabeth.” She described events that happened one Easter Sunday visit to church with her husband and step-son. As they went through the names of all the saints, Elizabeth waited in anticipation for the name of her saint — St. Elizabeth — to be called. Just as they called her saint, her step-son vomited Spaghetti‑O’s everywhere!
For the evaluation portion of the contest, Williams evaluated Andy Bernhardt’s speech, “Cat Ownership.” The key in Williams winning the evaluation contest was her effective use of the Sandwich Method. The sandwich method is “sandwiching” constructive feedback with positive feedback (positive – constructive – positive) a well touted Toastmasters feedback method.
The contest was held to determine who would represent the club in the area D2 contest being held on October 7, 2010. Toastmaster at the Towers is also hosting the area D2 contest. Winners of the area D2 contest continue to the district competition.
Second-place winners in the club contest were:
- Maurice Conroy of Milford with his speech “Mike’s Story.”
- Ketan Shah of Huntington in evaluating the “Cat Ownership” speech given by Bernhardt. Shah won second place in 2009’s area D2 contest.
Toastmasters International is the world’s largest educational organization devoted to communication and leadership development. Founded in 1924, this non-profit educational organization has nearly 226,000 members in 92 countries.
