SPEAKING POINTS FOR ROLE PLAYERS AT MEETINGS

ROLE: Toastmaster of the Day

Upon being handed controls by the President, the Toastmaster should acknowledge the audience and give a brief introduction about
his/her role at the meeting:

“ My role today is to host the meeting by introducing each segment, conducting the meeting in a manner of professionalism and to
ensure the audience is all attuned to the proceeding “

After initial introduction immediately begin with the proceedings of the meeting.
A very brief preliminary thought regarding the theme or purpose of the meeting can be shared.

The Toastmaster then immediately begins to recognize the support of the other generic role players at the meeting (and requests
them to – from their position of seating introduce their role briefly and clearly)
- Time
- Ah Counter
- Grammarian ( The grammarian can introduce his/her role in front of the audience if required)

Next , the Toastmaster moves on to the first segment and promptly introduces the Round Robin Master .During each segment , the
segment owners ( whether it be the Round Robin Master , Table Topics Master, General Evaluator , Speech Evaluators ) are
introduced in the following manner :Ensure that all the areas mentioned below are covered in the introduction

- Role players name and assigned role for the meeting

- Role players professional occupation ( place of work and designation)
- A key achievement of his (in Toastmasters if not elsewhere)Optional
- If there is a theme to the meeting for which any statement / observation can be thereafter shared ( again very briefly )
- End by saying “Ladies and Gentleman , please join me in welcoming the Table Topics /Role player etc. this evening , NAME”

The Toastmaster must welcome by shake of hand the respective segment owner and return to his seat at the Head Table.

Once the segment holder has completed his role, the Toastmaster retakes control of the meeting by way of a shake of hand.

When introducing prepared speaker and table topics speakers you must following the given order :

- Introduce the speech segment ( whether prepared or impromptu)

- Mention the project title ( CC manual project 4 ) and respective manual title ( this is applicable for ACB/ACS/ACG level
speeches )
- Call upon the project evaluator to read the objectives of the speech (Follow role player introduction order given above)
- After the evaluator concludes sharing of the project objectives , you must introduce the speaker

Make sure your introduction increases the level of reception a speaker gets and boosts his/her moral.
Introductions of speakers can be in the following manner:

- Speakers professional /Toastmaster background , one significant achievement ( optional)

- Project title (i.e. cc manual project 2 , structuring your speech )
- Name of the speaker
- Name of speech title
- Name of speech title
- Name of the speaker

The Toastmaster can conclude his segment by handing over control to the President after a brief 30 second recap/review talk.
If there is a guest speaker present at the meeting , The President will be called upon to introduce the guest speaker .
ROLE: Round Robin Master

Upon taking controls from the Toastmaster, the RRM is responsible for kick starting the meeting and building up the speaking energy
of the members and guests.

The RRM should acknowledge the audience and give a brief introduction about his/her role at the meeting:

“ My role today is to kick start the meeting with a brief energizer known as the Round Robin, This is an activity for which all
members and guests must participate . The purpose of this activity is to help you learn how to talk on your feet and speak sense”

The rules are simple (Clearly explain all the rules mentioned below)
- You are required to speak on a given topic for 20 seconds at the end of which the timer will ring the bell ( 15 second if the
audience is more than 40 people)
- The trick is that every speaker must begin his /her speech with the last word uttered by the previous speaker. For example
“if my last word was Wednesday the next speaker must start his speech with the word Wednesday “
- Most importantly stick to the given topic
- If you find it difficult to speak we won’t laugh or judge you, but at least try to speak a sentence or two.

As the Round Robin Master your main responsibility is to encourage and excite the members and guests, so select easy and
interesting topics that people can speak freely on. Avoid using topics that would cause embarrassment to people or that would
make people feel at unease.

Try to avoid topics such as developing a story (unless the story has a theme attached to it) or to speak on anything you want
(because the mind finds it difficult to focus) The best option is to give a definite topic that is of current interest to the audience .

If a member or guests forgets the last word it is your role to mention the last word as a form of support to the member/guest.

Mention the speaking order and ensure that you end the session with your 20 second speech time frame. Before you hand controls
to the audience close your segment by recapping the learning. Make sure you have a memorable –relevant close to your segment.

Once the segment holder has completed his role, the Toastmaster retakes control of the meeting by way of a shake of hand.
ROLE: Table Topics Master

Upon taking controls from the Toastmaster, the TTM is responsible for engaging members and guests in an impromptu speaking
challenge. The TTM should acknowledge the audience and give a brief introduction about his/her role at the meeting:

“My role today is to challenge you all to speak on the spot .Impromptu speaking is a skill that can only be mastered with constant
practice. At today’s meeting you are given the chance to speak spontaneously on a topic of you choice “

The rules are simple. (Clearly explain all the rules mentioned below)
- The topics are written on the Board , you have a choice of selecting any topic of your liking
- Each speaker is given 2 to 3 minutes to speak ,please follow the timers cards to keep track of time
- As this is an adult learning environment , we highly encourage you to volunteer to speak
- But in the event that the audience does not volunteer I will have to pick speakers at random
- This is a segment open to both members and guests so we would love to have at least one or two guests giving this a try
- We can accommodate up to 4 speeches in total ( 3 if we are running short of time)

Make sure you have thought out your topics well before the meeting and they are clearly written on the white board for all to see.
The topics you chose must be a mix of easy and challenging. Avoid using overly complicated topics as this might detract people from
wanting to speak.

If you want to make the session even more challenging, you can chose to have some topics written on the board and others which
can be picked at random .Leaving the choice up to the audience.

It is your job to introduce the speaker and his topic as follows before his speech: Introductions should be made in the following
manner:

“Ladies and gentlemen please welcome on stage (NAME), (TOPIC), (TOPC), and (NAME)”

Don’t forget to shake the speakers hand and then take your seat at the head table.

Once the speaker has concluded his/her speech, you need to shake his hand and make a brief positive response regarding his/her
talk. Your response can be a humorous side comment or a thought about what was just spoken. Don’t spend too much time over
praising or commenting on the speech, you are only the facilitator and not the speaker.

Once all the speakers have concluded their speeches, you must then call for the timer, ah counter and TT Evaluator to give his /her
report.

After all the evaluations are concluded, you can share one final thought in line with the theme of the meeting or key learning .This
would end your segment and the Toastmaster retakes control of the meeting by way of a shake of hand and exchanging of the
gavel.

TABLE TOPICS MASTER : Must ensure that the topics are displayed on a board for members and guests to chose. If you chose to
make your session challenging and have blind topics – you can have some for participants to pick . However at least half of the
topics should be put on the board ,to help people prepare .
ROLE: General Evaluator

Upon taking controls from the President, the GE is responsible for sharing his/her thoughts regarding the conduct of the meeting.
The GE should acknowledge the audience and give a brief introduction about his/her role at the meeting:

“The Purpose of a GE is to give independent feedback regarding the conduct and organization of the meeting today. I will be
providing a brief evaluation of all the role players and the atmosphere of the meeting so that we can constantly strive to improve the
meeting standards”

As the GE you need to comment on the following areas:

- Layout /atmosphere and ambiance of the meeting
- Highlight the names of the role players that stood out and give brief reasons for their success
- Highlight the names of the role players who needed improvement and give brief reasons for their underperformance

As the GE you need not spend time on each role player, just give a generic overview of your assessment. Avoid being too harsh and
overly critical so as to de-motivate role players. This is feedback with the purpose of improvement. Refrain from making any
comments about the speaker- that is not part of your role.

The GE’s evaluation must be submitted to the VP Education to act upon at the following meeting.

A GE will be allotted 2 minutes to share his /her thoughts.

Once you have shared your feedback, you must hand controls back to the President
ROLE: Grammarian

Upon taking controls from the Toastmaster , the Grammarian is responsible for monitoring the use of grammar at the meeting and
should introduce himself/herself in the following manner:

“As the Grammarian for the day, my role is to monitor the correct use of grammar and note areas for improvement. At the end of the
meeting I will be presenting a report from which we could all learn .My Second task is to share a word or short phrase for the day.
The audience is encouraged to actively use this word/phrase during the course of the meeting “

When picking a word for the day, try to find words that the audience could benefit from. Make sure that the word is printed out in
clear font and put up for all to view.

The word for the day needs to be explained , in terms of its meaning and adaptation in to a sentence. It would also help if the
correct pronunciation can be taught to those in the audience.

At the end of the meeting when the Grammarian is called up to present his /her report, you need to cover the following:
- Examples of correct use of grammar
- Examples of incorrect use of grammar and how this should be corrected
- Highlight any interesting and unique words used by the audience during the meeting
- Report on the word of the day usage

Most importantly if you are the grammarian make sure you don’t make grammatical mistakes while presenting your report.

The Grammarians report should be for duration of 2 minutes only . At the end of which you need to hand controls back to the
President
ROLE: Timer

Upon taking controls from the Toastmaster , the Timer is responsible for monitoring the time of role players and speakers at the
meeting.

Introduction should be made in the following manner:

“The timer is responsible for managing the time slots allocated to speakers and role players at the meeting. To assist you to better
deliver your speeches, I would use the following color cards at specific time intervals:

Green when you have reached your minimum time limit – for prepared speakers it may be 5 minutes or as specified in your project
manual and evaluators it is at the 2 minute mark.

The yellow card is raised when you have reached the average time limit – for prepared speakers it may be 6 minutes or as specified
in your project manual and evaluators it is at the 2 minute 30 second mark.

The red card is raised when you have reached the end of your time limit – for prepared speakers it may be 7 minutes or as specified
in your project manual and evaluators it is at the 3 minute mark and will remained raised until you finish your speech.”

The timer must only use the bell during the Round Robin session. For all other speaking segments he/she must use the color cards.
When reading out the timer report make sure you read the name of the speaker and his/her time. No other comments regarding
the speech should be made by the timer.

The timer must introduce his role and his time reports from his designated seat (and need not come to the front of the stage)
ROLE: Ah Counter

Upon taking controls from the Toastmaster, the Ah Counter is responsible for monitoring the speaker speech flow .
The following introduction regarding the roll can be made

“As the ah counter I am responsible to monitor the speaker in terms of his/her use of crutch words such as “you know, and so …” the
use of filler sounds “eeerrr, ahhh”, repetitive words and long pauses. It is also my role to notice the use of any unnecessary words
such as short forms, Sinhalese or Tamil words that are not translated and even the use of profanity.”

The Ah counter must present his report in the following manner

- Name of speaker, number of crutch words, long pauses, profanity and repetitive words

The Ah counter must not comment on any other aspects of the speech or share his/her personal opinions.

The Ah counter must introduce the role and report from his/her designated seat (and need not come to the front of the stage)
ROLE: Speech Evaluators

All speech evaluators must take care to give productive and unbiased feedback in a way that would benefit the speaker and the
audience.

In order to fulfill this role to its highest expectation, the evaluator must get in touch with the speaker and assess the project
objectives and provide support in preparation.

At the meeting a speech evaluator is first asked to present the objectives of the prepared speech. During which he/she must be
thorough with the project manual and speech objectives.

When introducing the objectives of the speech, the evaluator can refer to the “objective summary” and share his assessment
requirements in brief .This introduction should take no longer than 1 minute. The evaluator will then hand over controls to the
Toastmaster who will introduce the speaker to the audience.

When sharing the speech evaluation, the evaluator is responsible for submitting his written observations in the Toastmaster project
manual and handing it back to the speaker before the end of the meeting.

An evaluator is given a 2 minute time slot to provide a verbal report about the specific areas mentioned in the project objective. A
good evaluation should follow the below mentioned order:

- Summarize your thoughts about the speech in general (i.e. the thought behind the main theme, its relevance to the
audience etc.)
- Move on to highlighting some strong points of the speaker – it is always best to mention the strong points with examples
from the speech (i.e. – “Janaka I noticed you had a great sense of stage presence , right thorough out your speech you
moved about the stage with purpose during key intervals which I thought was impressive and helped the audience recall
the key points of your speech ”)
- Suggest areas for improvement – sharing points for improvement, does not mean you de-motivate the speaker .It is your
job to be constructively critical. When sharing thoughts for improvement always give a suggested technique that the
speaker could adopt to improve next time around in stead of just highlighting the mistake ( i.e.: “ Janaka one thing I noticed
in your speech was that you kept fidgeting with your hands, this can be very distracting to the listeners and I would
recommend that you avoid this by trying to focus on using open palm gestures throughout your speech until you master
more advanced forms of body language )
- Always end your evaluation by summarizing the key points in terms of areas for improvement and positive points. It is your
job to motivate the speaker to listen and actively learn from your evaluation.
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The same evaluation techniques apply for table topics evaluators .The duration given is 2 minutes.

If you have the time after the meeting, get in touch with the person either face to face or over the phone and run through the
points in detail so that any doubts or concerns can be cleared.

Most importantly if you are evaluating a speaker, make sure you don’t make the same speaking mistakes the speaker does while
presenting your evaluation.

Follow the speech evaluation guideline mentioned below to ensure you deliver relevant evaluations in 2 mins.