NI-Speechmeisters
Meeting Roles

What happens at a meeting?

The format varies slightly from club to club, but the basics include:

• The business meeting (usually very brief) introduction of the Toastmaster of the day, who presides over the program that meeting and explains the agenda as it goes along.
• Impromptu speeches from members (also known as Table Topics).
• Prepared speeches from members.
• Oral evaluations of the prepared speeches.
• Reports from other evaluation personnel, such as Time Keeper, Grammarian, "Ah" counter, and General Evaluator.

Meetings last anywhere from one hour (especially at lunch or breakfast) to three hours (if the club meets infrequently or has long-winded speakers)

Roles:

Toastmaster of the Day: Acts as host and conducts the meeting.

Table Topic Master: Table Topics are an opportunity to learn impromptu speaking and provides an opportunity for everyone at the meeting to speak. When you are the Table Topic Master, you ask questions that can easily be answered in 1-2 minutes.

Speaker: There are 10 manual speeches to choose from. Generally they are done in sequence but it is not mandatory. You may also use work/professional presentations for your speeches.

Timer Keeper: One important objective of Toastmasters is to learn to speak precisely, that is, expressing a thought within a specific time interval. The timer records and reports the times of the various segments of the meeting: speeches, table topics and evaluations. Speeches have varying times:

• The first "Icebreaker" speech is 4-6 minutes.
• The second-ninth speeches are 5-7 minutes.
• The tenth speech, "Inspire Your Audience," is 8-10 minutes.
• Table topics should be from 1-2 minutes.
• Evaluations (both speech and meeting) should be from 2-3 minutes.

Grammarian: There are two basic responsibilities of the Grammarian: to introduce new words to members and to comment on the use of English during the course of the meeting. Select a *Word of the Day* prior to meeting, potentially related to the theme of the meeting. The goal is to select a word that will increase our vocabulary; thus, we should choose words that go beyond the way we usually express ourselves, but also are easily incorporated into everyday speech (making adjectives and adverbs preferably).

Ah Counter: Make note of *killer fillers*--ums, ers, uhs, double words, and any other unnecessary pauses in a speech.

Speech Evaluator: After every speech, an evaluation is made. After you have presented a few speeches, you will be asked to serve as an evaluator and will evaluate one of the prepared speakers for the meeting. In addition to your oral evaluation, you will also give the speaker a written evaluation from the manual.

General Evaluator: The General Evaluator is just what the name implies... an evaluator of anything and everything that takes place throughout the meeting.

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