Gurney-Hydro Toastmasters Club

The best speeches made are not the ones that are fully memorized and delivered flawlessly.  The best speeches are the ones that the speakers are so adept at covering up their mistakes, you think it's part of the speech. Let's face it, it is not always possible to memorize an entire speech.  Even actors don't do an entire movie at one go.  They have rehearsals and work based on one scene at a time.  Sometimes they need several takes to get it right and if they don't, they have editors to make one scene flow seamlessly into the next one. Here are some our best loved tips to delivering a speech, not necessarily without flaws. 1. Have Cue Cards Most speakers have cue cards containing the main points of their speech that they refer to periodically, but that's all of their speech that is written.  The others they expand from their main points, not necessarily word for word from what they originally planned on doing.  This is part of the art of public speaking t

What is your greatest adventure? Many of us dream of travelling to far off places, drop everything and just hit the open roads with no road maps or plans and just a few good friends, or going at it solo...all for the purpose of getting away from the hustle and bustle of daily life and...just be... Be a traveller Be an enquirer Be a student Be clay waiting to be molded into a masterpiece Whatever your reasons, the great adventures of life have helped shaped us into the person that we are today. And guess what?  Having an adventure doesn't mean needing to go some place far away.  Adventure can be found in the mundane everyday things, such as driving in Penang like a few of our members shared during the night. Or things like trying out a new hairstyle, new cafe, getting lost on the way to work and discovering a new route or place to hang out. Look for adventure in life, in everything that you do.  That's where the magic is. The adventurers for the night If

Here is a quick public speaking tip for you to grow as a polished public speaker as fast as possible - join speech contests. At a speech contest or any contest for that matter, you can be sure that people will bring their A-game to the table.  You'll want to be around to see that. More than just a chance for you to challenge your skills and see where you stand, speech contests are where you can see how the best of the best do it. It is also your opportunity to tap into the expertise around you.  That's the biggest advantage to joining a Toastmasters Club.  There will be senior members in your club who already have a contest or two or ten under their belt.  They will be more than happy to share their experiences with you. After all, you could be the one representing the club to the next round of the contest, so they will want to make sure they help groom you from a candidate with some promise to a sure win candidate. When you're at the contest, don't stay in

" So , you know , like sometimes when you hear someone talk, they like say a lot of like totally unnecessary words and umm , that sort of like , makes the sentence like really, really long.   Umm , what's with that?   Like it's just so like ah , strange, you know , that they can't say something so ah , simple like straight to the point, you know ." The above is an example of excessive use of "sentence fillers".  The words in bold are the unnecessary words that we use all the time unconsciously in our daily conversations.  In other words, we stuff our sentences. This may not be practiced in written form, but record yourself when you're having a conversation with a friend and you may surprise yourself at how you literally stuff your sentences with all these fillers. When you come for a Toastmasters meeting, you will notice that there are people taking up various roles such as grammarian, timer, evaluator and this strange role called &quo

Sorry for the delay in updating his post.  We took an extended holiday ;p Since this meeting was held following a long holiday, we decided to set that as our theme.  And who does not love holidays?  Especially when it's an unexpected one =) Not surprising, majority of our members chose to use that time to sleep and rejuvenate themselves before facing work/studies again.  A few others sought adventure in far off lands. What did you do during the long break? What do you think?  Do we all look relaxed? Special congratulations to 2 of our members, Xin Ni (the cute girl in pink 2nd from right) and Edmund (the tall guy in black on the left) for starting their CC1 project.  We look forward to hearing your next speeches. If you would like the opportunity to hone your public speaking skills as well as learn leadership skills, join us for our bi-monthly meetings on every 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month.  Our meetings start at 8pm.  For further information please cont

The results are in! We are proud to present the winners of our recently concluded Humorous Speech & Speech Evaluation Contest. We have a very strong talent pool this year and majority of contestants being first timers.  Nevertheless they gave their all and made the contest a success. Congratulations to all the winners who will be representing Gurney-Hydro Toastmasters Club in the Area contest next.  We are confident that they will be contesting all the way to the top. Kudos also to our Organizing Chairman, Mr Bryant Oon aka Bryant with a "T" for his unwavering passion to organize this contest and getting all the key players together. Finally a big Thank You to all the role players, judges and members from other clubs who come to support our contest.  Your have helped make this a very memorable night indeed. If you would like the opportunity to hone your public speaking skills as well as learn leadership skills, join us for our bi-monthly mee