Toastmasters
Develop Public Speaking and Leadership Skills
Toastmasters clubs help you to develop your public speaking and leadership skills. Many toastmasters clubs can be found in Singapore and all over the world. They come under Toastmasters International, a non-profit educational organisation that teaches public speaking and leadership skills.
The Open Alumni Toastmasters Club is one of the many Toastmasters Clubs in Singapore. We hold our chapter meetings every 3rd Thursday of the month at Buona Vista Community Club, Level 2, Room 2-5, at 7:00 p.m. Currently, the Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club are holding joint chapter meetings with us at our venue.
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Toastmasters – What is it?
The word “toast” is a call to a gathering of people to raise their glasses and drink together in honour of a person or thing. You can envisage a toastmaster as a person who stand before a crowd, calling out for the attention of everyone at a gathering as if preparing them to raise their glasses, except in our context here we do not have glasses or champagne.
Nevertheless, at Toastmaster, we train and prepare ourselves to stand before a crowd from as little as 10 or more people in a club meeting to several hundreds of people at our toastmasters gathering or at any social or professional gathering to speak publicly. In Singapore, there are Toastmasters Clubs that speak English, Mandarin, Tamil and even Chinese dialects, namely, Cantonese, Hokkien and Teochew.
There are also bilingual Toastmasters Club that speak both English and Mandarin. For those toastmasters who are very active, they are members of more than one Toastmasters Club, all speaking English or in some cases, different languages.
Toastmasters History
Toastmasters International was founded by Ralph C. Smedly who was the director of education, Y.M.C.A. in Bloomington, Illinois U.S.
Smedly felt the need for men in the community to learn how to speak, conduct meetings, plan programes and work in committee. He began writing instructional manuals on how to conduct meetings and deliver public speaking and these instructions are passed down and continued to be taught in the Toastmasters manuals.
He experimented with a few clubs in Bloomington, Illinois and the meetings held in these clubs took shape as those of the current toastmasters club chapter meeting.
Smedly was moved subsequently to Y.M.C.A. in Santa Ana, California in 1922 which left the first few toastmasters clubs he founded, leaving them without good leadership to continue with. Eventually, Smedly organised officially the first Toastmasters Club of Toastmasters International and held its first meeting at Y.M.C.A. building in Santa Ana, California, on 22 October 1924.
The first meeting was held at Y.M.C.A. building in 22 October 1924.
Toastmasters Activities & Events
The most fundamental activity of Toastmasters is the Club Chapter Meeting. Once a year, every club will organise one or two speech contests at the club level. They also organise a variety of workshops particularly, the Speechcraft Workshop, teaching the fundamentals of public speaking skills.
Speech contests, workshops, officer trainings and conventions are also held at the area, division and district level.
In all Toastmasters activities and events, they focus fundamentally on two skills: Public Speaking (also known more commonly in Toastmasters as Communication) and Leadership.
Toastmasters develop their public speaking skills through participating in prepared speech projects, speech evaluations and spontaneous speech deliveries called table topics. These three activities are the fundamental activities that are carried out during the Club Chapter Meeting.
Toastmasters Mission
The tagline of Toastmasters is, “Where Leaders Are Made”. The Toastmasters mission is to develop a leadership in each toastmaster from 2 aspects. A good leader is a good communicator. Thus, the Toastmasters movement seek to develop the communication skills of each toastmaster, not only at the area of public speaking but also at the person to person level.
Toastmasters develop their leadership skills by volunteering their services in various leadership roles and organising activities and events at different organisational level in Toastmasters.
Toastmasters Organisational Structure
Toastmasters District 80 used to comprise the Toastmasters Clubs in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Thailand in July 2004. In July 2010, Hong Kong and Macau were moved to District 89. By July 2014, District 80 comprises purely clubs in Singapore whereas Thailand formed a new District 98P with her neighbouring countries.
There are 11 divisions in District 80, namely, Division A, B, D, E, G, L, S, T, U, V and Z. Each division is then subdivided into several areas and each area comprises 4 to 6 clubs.
The Open Alumni Toastmasters Club comes under Division B, Area B2.
Toastmasters Chapter Meeting
What is a Toastmasters Chapter Meeting?
How do you develop your public speaking skills as a toastmaster?
The Toastmasters Chapter Meeting is the club meeting where each and every club member attends and develop their public speaking skills even if that is their minimal participation as a toastmaster.
It is every toastmaster’s training ground.
The Toastmasters clubs are the basic building blocks of Toastmasters International. Each club holds their own chapter meetings at different frequencies, varying from once a month, once a fortnight to even once every week. If you find it challenging to find time for yourself, you probably find clubs that meet once a month most suitable for you.
Clubs that meet more regularly usually have unusually large number of members and so it is necessary for them to meet more regularly in order that there are more opportunities for every member to deliver their prepared speech projects. Upon completion of a number of projects, you will earn a title in your Toastmaster journey.
At each chapter meeting, around 3 to 6 toastmasters will present their individual prepared speech projects. Each speaker will then have their speech evaluated by another toastmaster, called the Project Evaluator or Speech Evaluator.
There will also be a session called the Table Topics where the Table Topic Master will prepare different topics for voluntary speakers to speak on those topics for 1 to 2 minutes. There will also be a toastmaster to evaluate the use of language by all the speakers towards the end of the meeting.
Both members and non-members may attend any toastmasters club chapter meeting. However, only club members and visiting toastmasters from other clubs may present prepared speeches. For table topic speeches (impromptu speeches), both toastmasters and non-toastmasters may volunteer or be volunteered (encouraged) to speak.
In spontaneous speech deliveries (table topics), the Table Topic Master (the person who is in charge of this activity during the chapter meeting) will come up with a list of topics to be talked about. These topics can be any conversational issues that people talk at random while sitting at a table sipping a cup of tea or coffee, thus the term table topics. Some examples are as follow:
Visit Our Next Chapter Meeting
Our next meeting is on 20 November 2025.
We meet regularly on every 3rd Thursday of the month at Buona Vista Community Club, 36, Holland Drive, Level 3, Room 03-02, Singapore 270036.
Tables Topics Examples
- Is university education still necessary since a university degree does not necessarily enable you to find a job better than a non-graduate?
- If the wife earns more than the husband, then should the husband be the one to quit his job to look after the children instead of the wife?
- Do you prefer to live a more fulfilled life in exchange for a shorter lifespan instead of a long but miserable life?
During Table Topics, a toastmaster or a visitor at the club chapter meeting will pick at random one of the topics that were prepared by the Table Topic Master and is expected to deliver a one to two-minute speech spontaneously.
Prepared Speech Projects
Prepared Speech Projects may only be delivered by toastmasters either in their own club or as visitors to other clubs. In prepared speeches, a toastmaster will prepare usually a five to seven-minute speech based on a particular toastmaster communication manual. In each manual, there are several projects focusing on different communication skill sets. Traditionally, a new toastmaster is required to complete a series of 10 projects from the Competent Communication manual, focusing on a spectrum of public speaking skills.
Upon completion of the Competent Communication manual, a toastmaster earns the title of Competent Communicator. After which, the toastmaster will choose to embark on a series of projects of his/her choice from the manuals from the Advanced Communication Series. There are 15 manuals from the Advanced Communication Series, some of which focus on delivering technical presentation, humorous speeches, persuasive speeches, etc. Currently, Toastmaster International has redesigned the public speaking curriculum, which is also known as the Communication Track, to what is currently known as Pathways.
Evaluation Speeches
An Evaluation Speech is delivered by a toastmaster called the Evaluator who has been assigned to first listen to another toastmaster’s prepared speech and subsequently deliver a two to three-minute speech that provides feedback to him/her what he/she had done well in her prepared speech and the areas that he/she needed to improve on, based on the guidelines provided by the speech manual. It is in learning to evaluate someone else’s speech that a toastmaster truly develop and improve in his own personal public speaking skills because he/she has to understand the required skills and to reflect deeply on oneself before he/she could evaluate and give feedback to others.