Greenville Toastmasters Club...
Nichols Advances to District Humorous Speech Contest 

Betty Nichols, a member of the Greenville Toastmasters Club, will compete on Saturday, November 5 at the District 40 Fall Conference in Fairborn, Ohio.  

Nichols initially gave her speech entitled Dilemma a year ago during a club meeting.  With encouragement from club members, she continued to polish the speech for the club-level humorous speech contest in September. 

From there, Nichols captured first place in the Area Contest held at the Dayton Public Library and the Northern Division Contest at Miamisburg.  Her speech is a crowd pleaser, as it humorously explores the question faced by any Toastmaster…  When can a Toastmaster say, ‘Ah’ and get away with it?  

Nichols has been a member for the Greenville Toastmasters Club for nineteen months.  She said she was challenged with the question, “When can a person appropriately say the word Ah?” during her visit to a Greenville Toastmasters meeting. 

During her speech, Nichols said she experienced the support of club members as they strove to improve in areas of listening, thinking, and speaking under the guidance of a table topics master, word master, listen master, speech evaluator, and grammarian.  But it was the AH counter that intrigued Nichols the most.  She left the meeting that evening wondering if it ever was possible to use the word Ah. 

Club members have noted Nichols’ growth in poise, voice quality, effective word choice, and speech content as she prepared for each contest. 

“Speech contests are a unique and exciting part of the Toastmasters program,” says Pat Johnson, Toastmasters 2010-2011 International President. “These competitions challenge members to push beyond their clubs and fine-tune their skills. In a club, members are evaluated; in a contest, members are judged.” 

To enter the humorous speech contest, a person must be an active member of Toastmasters International.  All participant speeches must be original, presented in English and last five to seven minutes. Judging criteria include originality, speech content, organization, audience response, voice quality, gestures and timing. 

Greenville Toastmasters Club meets at Chestnut Hall located inside the Chestnut Village Center in the Brethren Retirement Community at 7:00 PM on second and fourth Tuesdays.  Members work from basic communication and leadership manuals before advancing to specialized speaking skills in areas of public relations, management, technical presentations, persuasive speaking, storytelling, humorous speaking, specialty speeches, and other advanced communication programs.  

About Toastmasters 

Toastmasters International is a nonprofit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. The organization currently has more than 260,000 members in over 12,500 clubs in 113 countries. Since its founding in October 1924, the organization has helped more than 4 million men and women give presentations with poise and confidence.  For information about local Toastmasters clubs, visit toastmasters.org or click here for  their website.