Munich Toastmasters Club meets twice a month, on every first and third Tuesday. We often run extra meeting out of normal schedule, to give the opportunity for more members and guests, to get involved into public speaking!
What can I expect from a Toastmasters Meeting?
Although meeting formats may vary from time to time and from club to club, it is possible to speak of a “typical” meeting format:
- After opening the meeting and greeting visitors, the club president will hand over to the “Toastmaster of the Evening” to lead through the meeting.
- We then proceed to what we in Toastmasters call “Table Topics”. This is actually just an opportunity for us to exercise thinking and speaking on our feet. One member, the Table Topics Master, will present a topic and then call upon fellow members to speak spontaneously for one or two minutes on that topic. Visitors may be invited to participate in this exercise, but only if they wish to do so.
- The next part of the evening is devoted to prepared speeches typically lasting between five and seven minutes. In this segment, three or four members will present a speech which they have written themselves. Members may speak about any topic they wish, but during preparation of their speech are asked to complete an assignment in their Toastmasters workbook. These assignments focus on various aspects of public speaking such as speech organization, vocal variety, body language, etc.
- Next comes the evaluation section. Each of the evening’s speakers will receive a 2-3 min oral evaluation from a fellow member. Feedback must be positive and constructive, but at the same time, honest. Apart from this subjective feedback other members will report on timings (nearly everything we do in Toastmasters is timed so that we learn to keep it short and to the point), praiseworthy and not-so-praiseworthy uses of language, and even the number of times that speakers use verbal fillers such as “ah”.
Learn more about Meeting Roles.
The club president will then make some club announcements and invite visitors to provide brief feedback as to how they experienced the evening.
We accomplish all of this within a space of two hours. A Toastmasters meeting is thus quite formalized, designed to make efficient use of time while allowing each member to speak at least once before the group. A Toastmasters meeting also affords plenty of opportunity to learn how to plan and conduct various meeting segments.