Hello, everyone!
I am a website administrator of Visionaries Toastmasters Club, an English speaking Toastmasters club to learn public speaking skills.
I had never imagined myself being a member of this club, but I am confident that my experience in this club has helped me so much with my presentation and daily communication in English at my workplace.
However, when I share some advantages of this club with my colleagues, everyone just says, “What the heck is Toastmasters…?”
It is like seeing the old me.
So today, I would like to introduce our club, Visionary Toastmasters Club!!!
Should you be diffident of English presentation, we can help you!
Public speaking skills cannot be taught at schools! Create your own opportunity!
We make a lot of presentations at business: presenting a new project, reporting progress, etc.
What we have to achieve in the limited time of each meeting are, 1) to convince the audience of our message and 2) to get stakeholders to take action.
People with advanced presentation skills can enjoy their advantage.
They can persuade stakeholders to take action and handle business, which leads the project to success and improves their reputation.
There are many situations that convince us of the importance of presentation skills.
However, we cannot acquire them so easily.
Because, there are several essential techniques we must not miss.
Those techniques cannot be taught at schools.
Thus, everyone tries to find or create their own techniques through trial and error.
A good autodidact might be able to do that, but it must not be the most efficient way.
Why do we have to be so inefficient?
We are all pressed for time. We need efficiency!
Don’t you think there might a better, more efficient way to learn those techniques?
Joining Toastmasters club might be a solution.
I regard Toastmasters club as,
a club to learn essential public speaking techniques efficiently.
Over 300,000 members around the world have been making efforts to acquire or refurbish their public speaking skills.
The advantage of joining Toastmasters club is that we can have access to the essential techniques necessary to improve our public speaking skills.
Let’s take the quickest way to acquire them!
Learn fundamental presentation skills at Toastmasters club
Needless to say, the word toastmaster is English.
Dictionary says that toastmaster is,
a person responsible for proposing toasts, introducing speakers, and making other formal announcements at a large social event.
So, it basically means a person who proposes a toast, introduces speakers, or makes a formal announcement in a big party or the like. In other words, a person to facilitate the floor.
“Toastmasters club” has this word in its name, because the members learn public speaking and leadership skills through their club experience.
What you can do at Toastmasters club
Toastmasters club is something like a workshop.
We learn essential public speaking techniques through manuals and repeatedly practice them by making speeches.
These are the manuals.
We learn essential public speaking techniques from these manuals.
Some of the techniques are:
-
- Speak logically
- Make eye contact
- Change voice pitch
- Utilise body language, etc.
One of the practices we do in our club is to make a 5 to 7 minutes speech in front of the other members.
Imagine yourself making a speech in front of many people.
Everyone is staring at you.Nervous?
Yes, I really understand your feeling.But don’t be afraid of making mistakes.
We all have the same difficulties, and that’s the reason we join Toastmasters club.
The more we experience, the more we improve our skill.No one wants to make mistakes, but we can learn a lot from them.
Toastmasters club is a place where we challenge ourselves.
We make mistakes; but we learn from them to achieve peak performance when we really have to make a presentation.
Having such a place to practice beside my workplace is invaluable for me.Learning from members. Making speeches in front of diverse members is invaluable!
Toastmasters club doesn’t have any instructors. The only thing we learn public speaking skills from are the manuals.
It must be very rare, but isn’t it ideal to practice presentation?Who is the audience of our presentation?
It must be our colleagues or our boss.
In other words, ordinary people working in a company, like the members of Toastmasters club, not an instructor.
Speeches in Toastmasters club can be a simulation of our presentations at our workplace.
Invaluable feedback from other members
After a speech, we get some feedback from other members.
They let us know good points and improvement points in a concrete manner.Here are some samples.
Can you get such feedback from the audience at your workplace?
They are very helpful to check whether we could successfully deliver our message to the audience.
What are the features of VISIONARIES Toastmasters Club?
Let me introduce some features of Visionaries Toastmasters Club!
The biggest one is that it is an English-speaking club.
We practice public speaking in English; thus, members use English as a global communication tool at their workplace.
Let me introduce some other features as well!Meets a variety of purposes
Everyone has a different background, so the purpose of being a member of this club differs a lot.
Some of the common purposes are:- To be able to make a logical presentation in English without being nervous
- To maintain his/her English skills
- To join an English speaking Toastmasters club
The last one might sound a bit strange.
Actually, Toastmasters is pretty popular in foreign countries.
So, some of our members from foreign countries had belonged to a club before they came to Japan.
Those members choose our club as a place to continue their learning experience in Japan.By the way, I belong to this club “to be able to make a logical presentation in English without getting nervous.”
The club activities are absolutely helpful for me.Can communicate with people with various backgrounds.
One of the advantages of an English-speaking club is that you can meet a variety of people.
As English is a global communication tool, members from variety of countries belong to our club.
Everyone respects each other without any barriers in verbal communication.
Isn’t it sweet?Focuses on “globally practical English”
How have you been learning English?
I had believed that the most important thing is that I speak without any grammatical mistakes.
But, I realised through my experiences in this club; it was just complacency.A conversation or communication is not a test.
There is no definite answer.
What we have to focus on is “how to deliver our message without causing any misunderstandings.”Not all of our members speak English as fluently as native speakers.
But, we all work on public speaking focused on “globally practical English”.
We put more emphasis on “how to deliver our message without causing any misunderstandings” than vocabulary or pronunciation.It does not mean that we dismiss grammar or pronunciation.
But, if you have any difficulties in speaking English because you are diffident about the correctness of your grammar or pronunciation, although you have a basic knowledge of grammar and can write and read English, why don’t you join us to start using English as a communication tool?If you’re interested, why don’t you visit our club?
You are always welcome!
