Speaking With a Purpose

The Toastmasters Advanced Speaking Series offers guidance and practice in speaking for almost any purpose you might imagine. Today, our club had two speeches from Advanced Communication manuals.

Arlinda read Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven for a project from the Interpretive Reading Manual. Kerry spoke of "The Longest Eight Miles" for a project from the Storytelling Manual.

Along with "The Entertaining Speaker" and the "Humorously Speaking" manuals, these two manuals contain projects which address some of the purely fun aspects of oral communication. But there are advanced manuals which address more serious forms of speaking as well. This series contains such manuals as "Speaking to Inform", "Technical Presentations", "Speeches by Management", "Interpersonal Communication", "Persuasive Speaking", and "Facilitating Discussion" to name just a few.

The point is, Toastmasters offers guidance and practice for speakers of any skill level and for improving in nearly any type of oral communication that human beings engage in. I would venture to say that nearly everyone engages in one or more of the types of communication addressed by the Toastmasters program on a daily basis.

So, the question is, "Why isn't everyone a Toastmaster?" If you're reading this, I encourage you to check out a Toastmasters meeting near you this week.