Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Won humorous speech club contest!



Yesterday evening, I won the humorous speech contest of my Toastmasters Club! Five of 40 members participated in the contest. The humorous speech contest is the most difficult one psychologically speaking, because what if nobody laughs! :-) You need to be a hardened speaker! On Saturday I will compete in the Luxembourg area contest against 5 other participants (two each from the three clubs). Toastmasters is really a great and safe place to practise public speaking. I can only recommend it to everyone! It's the second time I participated and the second time that I won. Last time I went until Paris.

Again, my success shows that fluent speech is just one part of communication. Public Speaking is more. It's about writing a good speech that flows well, body language, stage presence, vocal variety, engaging your audience, pausing, humour and meaning. Some cynics might say that I only win, because I stutter. They have pity. Sure, I probably get a few extra points for my courage, but I am immediately loosing them again because of dysfluent speech.

6 comments:

Norbert @ BSA said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

congrats....

I do wonder why the comment above was removed by the author. Just leave it....

Conquer the world!

Anonymous said...

can you post your winning humorous speech?

pity or no pity, you won (and that is the bottom line)

Tom Weidig said...

Yes. I will later.

Norbert @ BSA said...

Anonymous

the deletion was by me. I mistakenly posted a comment for another thread in this thread. So no sinister intent.

Pam said...

Congratulations Tom on winning a TM contest. I have been in TM now for three years, and still have not summoned up the courage to compete. I feel I can't keep within the time lines.