Solihull Speakers Club
Club Evening
The Club has a vibrant atmosphere and provides a wonderful environment for practising your public speaking.
A typical Club Evening evening consists of 3 or 4 speeches of about 5 mins, each aimed at a particular assignment from the ASC Speakers Guide, e.g. a speech delivered with special attention to gestures.
Each speech is commented upon - we call it evaluated - by a more experienced member. The evaluation is positive and, as well as identifying the speaker's strong points, will provide advice for improvement. Occasionally a speaker is advised to repeat the assignment, bearing in mind the evaluator's advice.
We have a coffee break - about 15 mins - a time for meeting others and arranging various out of club speaking activities. Then follows a session giving everyone the chance to speak for 2 mins to a speech title that is "thrown" at them. We call this the topics session. The idea is to gain experience in coping with that unexpected call to speak, e.g. a vote of thanks.
The whole evening is handled by a Chairman for the Evening, providing wonderful experience in planning and handling meetings of any sort. For the topics session, the Chairman hands over to a Topics Chairman. Each topic taker, along with the Topics Chairman, is evaluated (you guessed it - by the Topics Evaluator). Finally we have a General Evaluator who assesses all the other Evaluators, the Chairman for the Evening, and anyone else who has not already been evaluated.
By the end of the evening, every person should have had the opportunity to speak. The weekly programmes are carefully scheduled by our Education Director to ensure that we each can progress at our own pace through the various assignments and that we each have the chance to be Chairman for the Evening, Topics Chairman, etc.
At most meetings one of us presents a 2 min tip to any subject we like, e.g. speech preparation, handling audience reaction, eye contact.