This is the second part of the installment on the Competent Communication manual. In part 1, we saw how a complete beginner, Kawmadee, under the watchful eye of her mentor, Abishake, learned the basics of public speaking. Now, let’s follow her as she refines her skills through the next few projects in her Competent Communication manual.
Vocal Variety
The human voice has a major effect on the audience. A good speaking voice is pleasant, natural, forceful, expressive, and easily heard. So how can Kawmadee captivate her audience with her voice? According to her mentor, she should vary voice volume, pitch, rate and quality to add meaning and interest to her message. Further, she should use pauses to enhance her points.
Research Your Topic
Kawmadee has a presentation to do at the university as part of her coursework in about a month. Abishake sees this as a good opportunity to get her to complete two more projects in the manual. In this project, she must collect information about her topic from numerous sources. Next, she must carefully support her points and opinions with specific facts, examples and illustrations gathered through her research.
Get Comfortable with Visual Aids
For the aforementioned presentation, Kawmadee must make a slide deck to be displayed on the screen. So, her mentor suggests that she gets comfortable with using visual aids by completing her 8th project in the manual. This project is about selecting visual aids that are appropriate for her message and the audience. Also, she should use them correctly with ease and confidence.
Persuade with Power
Now that Kawmadee knows how to ace her presentations at the university, she wants to move into something bigger. She wants to become an inspirational public speaker. Abishake teaches her how to persuade people with her speaking skills. He advices her to think from the viewpoint of the audience, and to use logic and emotion to bring them to your viewpoint.
Inspire Your Audience
This is it – the pinnacle of the journey in Gavel to become a competent communicator. In this project, Kawmadee uses all the skills she picked up from the previous projects to inspire the audience. She needs to appeal to noble motives and challenge the audience to achieve a higher level of belief or achievement.
This is it. 10 projects after joining the club as a newbie, we have produced a competent communicator. We have a great public speaker who can inspire and influence a community. Does this sound like you in the future? If so, read on!
Are you still not a member of the Gavel Club? Please feel free to join. Are you a newbie in the club? Please contact our Vice President – Education and get started on your speeches. Just don’t forget to get your evaluation sheets signed by your evaluator. Are you someone who has started the journey, but lost the will to go on? Let this article be an inspiration to bring out the great Orator in you.
The world awaits to listen to you.
By: Uditha Weerasinghe
Note: You can download the Competent Communicator manual from Toastmasters International right here.
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