The purpose of Toastmasters is to help members overcome apprehensions about speaking in public, improve communication skills and develop leadership skills. This is accomplished by providing a self-paced, focused speaking program with a supportive, experienced group of people to assist you.
This mutual support will help you become more effective in several skills, including formal public presentations, individual communications, impromptu speaking situations, managing and participating in meetings, and leading and managing people. The chief mechanism in developing these skills is through the typical club meeting, which is designed to provide an opportunity to practice various techniques in a variety of situations. A normal Toastmasters meeting will contain a number of individual sections within the meeting, as described below.
Table Topics During this portion of the meeting, club members and sometimes guests practice impromptu speaking by responding to topic questions prepared by the Table Topics Master.
Prepared Speeches In this section, assigned members practice their public speaking skills by giving a prepared presentation from the Pathways program. Each project in a Pathways' path has a specific objective in an area that helps members practice different speaking techniques.
Why do people join Toastmasters? In the Pathways learning experience there are 11 specialized learning paths to choose from and an opportunity to leverage over unique competencies.
Pathways is a cutomised learning experience designed to help you meet your personal and professional goals. It is built around the four guiding principles of Toastmasters, being experiential learning, self-paced learning, peer evaluation and mentoring.
In particular you learn by doing with your efforts evaluated by your fellow Club members. You will be gradually introduced to the various roles within a Toastmasters meeting. Gaining proficiency in these helps improve your communication and build your leadership skills.
People all progress at their own pace. Some move faster than others but everyone who joins Toastmasters and participates in the program can be sure they will become a competent speaker. Your skills develop gradually. As you proceed you will find that situations that once terrified you, now hold no fears for you. In fact in comparison to various courses, seminars, programs and kits offered through the media, Toastmasters is the least expensive and in our opinion the most effective way to learn public speaking and to develop confidence and self esteem.
Anyone over the age of 18 years may join Toastmasters. You can find details of Toastmasters clubs by clicking the Find a Club link. In Toastmasters, you will enhance them. At Toastmasters, members learn by speaking to and working with, others in a supportive environment. A typical Toastmasters club is made up of 20 to 30 people who meet once a week for about an hour and a half.
Each meeting gives everyone an opportunity to learn and practice the skill of communication. Meetings often begin with a short business session which helps members learn the basics of meeting procedures. Members present minute impromptu speeches on assigned topics.
At a meeting, often two to three members will present speeches based on projects from the Toastmasters International Communication and Leadership Program manuals.
The skills learned in these often harrowing experiences, cover topics such as speech organization, voice, language, gestures, and persuasion. Every prepared speaker is assigned an evaluator who points out the speech strengths and offers suggestions for areas of improvement. Most success depends on communication.
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