Christopher Manning

For the last speech of the Competent Communicator manual, I wanted to reflect on my time at Toastmasters of Lincoln Park. I was really surprised how quickly my time was up. I did not spend a lot of time rehearsing this speech, but I was confident in my abilities and pleased with the results. I have learned a lot about myself and being a better communicator from deliberately practicing and being inspired by the other speakers at the club. I look forward to giving more speeches from the advanced manuals. I will be working on “Interpersonal Communication” and “Interpretive Reading”.

• 12/15/2011
• 1 Ah/um
• 9:52 minutes from a recommended 8-10 minutes

The first thing I wrote down in my notes after I sat down after my speech was: “That was easy”. I had a well rehearsed speech and I came across well. This is definitely my best speech so far and I am really proud of my progress so far. I could have slowed down my pace more, but I had a lot to talk about in a small amount of time. In the future, I will take the flash cards into consideration as I give the speech to prune it at predetermined points if necessary.

• 10/21/2010
• 0 Ah/um
• 6:12 minutes from a recommended 5-7 minutes

I went over time again. It’s rather difficult to give an application presentation and tutorial in under 7 minutes. I think it would have been best had I limited myself to no more than ten slides (I had 22). Unfortunately, this caused me to rush the ending and it jeopardized the comprehension of the last third of the presentation. Other than my time issues, I am happy with how I spoke and came across. I have definitely improved many aspects of my speaking so far. Overall I think this was my best speech so far and it provides me with the confidence to finish the next two speeches in spectacular fashion.

• 07/01/2010
• 2 Ah/um
• 8 minutes from a recommended 5-7 minutes

This speech was five months in the making and it focused on the features of ToastPark. The club had just procured a slide changer and it helped quite a bit even though I forgot to plug it in. My main misstep for this speech was my time. I decided, during preparation, that I had to go over the limit to adequately present the application. So, I knew I was going to go over, but I didn’t realize it would be 11 minutes. Though, the audience was transfixed and I didn’t feel too bad about it. Unfortunately, my awareness of how much I had to fit into the time limit and how late I was running caused me to rush my speaking more than I would have liked. One evaluation sheet mentioned I should smile more, and after watching the tape, I realized this was very true. I will have to be sure to integrate moments of laughter, and go with the laughter, not just wait for it to stop when it happens. At the end I started clapping for some reason, I’ll have to not do that again. I suppose I felt like I did a good job and wanted to give myself a round of applause. At 33 seconds, I saw somebody in the audience obviously holding back laughter and I almost started laughing myself. I did start stumbling over my words, but a few seconds later I was able to compose myself and remember not to look at that person.

• 12/17/2009
• 1 Ah/um
• 11 minutes from a recommended 5-7 minutes

Three days before the meeting, I noticed there was only one other speaker signed up for the meeting. I used that as motivation to come up with a topic for this speech. After a lot of brainstorming, I settled on a subject that turned out to be more emotional then I expected. I did a lot of things right in this speech. In particular, the importance of setting the tone and subject of your speech in the first sentence was reaffirmed. If I didn’t make it very clear in the beginning that this was a serious speech, my reputation of being jokey on stage may have preceded me. Overall, I consider this my finest speech so far.

• 11/05/2009
• 0 Ah/um
• 5 minutes and 51 seconds from a recommended 5-7 minutes