Have you ever listened to a speech which was so dull that you were trying your best to stay awake? If you were falling asleep while listening to the speech, obviously the speaker had failed to capture your attention. Surely, you do not want to let your audience fall asleep if you were the speaker. Adding humor to your speech is one of the ways to captivate your audience (and keep them awake through out your speech).
Toastmasters Club provides you with the platform to learn how you can add humor to your speech. By participating in Toastmasters-organized humorous speech contest, you have the chance to practise incorporating humor into your speech. As the old saying goes, “Practise makes perfect”.
On 27th July 2009, Mid Valley Toastmasters Club held its Humorous Speech Contest 2009 / 2010. The contest started off well with the first participant, Leung Wan Choong, talking about how he grew up as a blur boy (and still blur until today). The laughter-filled speech was continued with the next participant, Su Jane, who spoke about marriage (and how marriage could potentially be a mousetrap). She spoke about how strange it is that the singles want to get married, and yet the married ones want to be single again. As the audience slowly contemplated that she might not be happily married, she clarified that she is actually happily married and happy with her life now. The next contestant, Poh Leong, spoke about his 2 younger brothers. He told stories about how one of them was so young that he was at times mistaken as Poh Leong’s son, and how the other one was so blur, which gave rise to a few embarrassing moments to his dad.
The Humorous Speech Contest was won by Poh Leong, with Su Jane as the 1st runner-up.
The humor-filled night was then proceeded with Evaluation Contest 2009 / 2010. As has been repeatedly mentioned in Toastmasters meetings, “Feedback is the breakfast of Champions”. For one to improve to be a champion, one has to constantly seek feedback to one’s performance, and improve from thereon. Through the Evaluation Contest, you can learn how you can provide encouraging and value adding feedback for a speaker to improve to become a champion.
The test speaker, Fariq from Help Toastmasters Club, presented his speech on the importance of history. He began his speech by introducing the term history as “his-story”, and went on to talk about the history of how the Portuguese conquered Malacca, before ending with explaining why learning history was so important.
He was evaluated by 5 participants of the Evaluation Contest. The participants were Leung Wan Choong, Poh Leong, Su Jane, Christine Ong and Gerard Peter. The evaluator who gave the most encouraging and detailed evaluation was Christine Ong, who was subsequently crowned as the champion of the Evaluation Contest. Poh Leong was the 1st runner-up and Gerard Peter was the 2nd runner-up.
The night was great, with good food and well organized programme line-up. Thanks to Chia Hur (who played both the roles of Organizing Chair and Contest Chair) and Su Jane (who helped Chia Hur in the background and arranged for the elegant trophies). Special thanks as well to the judges, test speaker, role players and guests.
by Tan Poh Leong, VPE Mid Valley Toastmasters Club
