Suppose you’re a wordsmith with a beautiful story about your coming of age for your Toastmasters contest speech. Not good enough. As the results are read out, you’re horrified that some clown that didn’t have anywhere near as good a story as you walks away with first place. All that the clown did was move around the stage a lot, which you didn’t do at all. What went wrong?
RTFM. Read the “flipping” manual.
The judges have a scoring sheet that they go off of to determine who wins the contest. These assign fixed points to speaking elements like vocal variety, body language, speech development, and so on. That minute of silence between speeches is so they can add up their scores, after all.
If you want to do any of the Toastmasters contests and you want to win, you have to know how various elements of speaking are going to be weighted. A football coach doesn’t go out thinking a touchdown is 3 points and a field goal 6.
I got the scoring guidelines below from our TM friends in Chicago for the International Speech. They have it and the complete rules up here. It’s not a bad idea to read through all the rules and regulations, though the scoring table is still the most important.
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INTERNATIONAL SPEECH - JUDGE’S GUIDE |
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Suggested Point Values |
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Judging Items |
Excellent |
Very Good |
Good |
Fair |
Remarks |
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CONTENT (50) |
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Speech Development |
20 |
19-14 |
13-9 |
8-0 |
Structure, organization, support material |
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Effectiveness |
15 |
14-11 |
10-6 |
5-0 |
Achievement of purpose, interest, reception |
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Speech Value |
15 |
14-11 |
10-6 |
5-0 |
Ideas, logic, original thought |
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DELIVERY (30) |
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Physical |
10 |
9-7 |
6-4 |
3-0 |
Appearance, body language |
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Voice |
10 |
9-7 |
6-4 |
3-0 |
Flexibility, volume |
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Manner |
10 |
9-7 |
6-4 |
3-0 |
Directness, assurance, enthusiasm |
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LANGUAGE (20) |
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Appropriateness |
10 |
9-7 |
6-4 |
3-0 |
to speech purpose and audience |
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Correctness |
10 |
9-7 |
6-4 |
3-0 |
Grammar, pronunciation, word selection |
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Total Points |
(100 points possible) |
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When we watched the tapes of the International Speech Contest winners in my club, many of us commented that they had exaggerated, theatrical gestures. Part of this was because they were on a big stage and playing to the live audience, not the TV cameras. But they absolutely read the manual giving 10 points to body language and another 10 to enthusiasm.
At the club level you maybe able to skate by without knowing about the manual. But at Area and beyond you’re going to get judged by Toastmasters who know what they’re doing and are going to be going off that sheet (in theory) and other competitors who should know about the scoring. That they won’t always is no defense.
I can attest to the value of this from when I won the District Evaluation contest. I never spend a lot of time summarizing my evaluation. To this day, I say what I have to and then shut up. But when a member of my club showed me that 15 points were awarded for summation, I made it a point to come up with really memorable closings in the contests. Given how fierce the competition was, I believe this is what gave me the edge.
So - if you’re a natural at gestures and vocal variety and summations you’ll be fine in any contest. But for the rest of us - RTFM!
in 2-5-2008 @ 09:33:34
This is a *great* post! I’ve seen contestants wonder why they didn’t win, after obviously missing some of the requirements. A big one in our district is “organization.” I’m surprised at how many of the speakers just “wing it” and end up with rambling speeches that miss the mark.