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1|Jan 2014|11th Term

Yokogawa Toastmasters Club January 2014 11th Term, Issue 2

Executive Committee 2013-2014

President Jhelyn Suan Immediate Past President Anthony Lim VP Education Sivakumar Gopalan Sushant Pandita VP Membership Patrick Chan VP Public Relations Amber Nguyen Chen Zhen Kang Secretary Aruna Kasoju Treasurer Prasanthi Polakala Gangadhara Sergeant At Arms Karthik Raja Periasamy Club Advisors Dr. Amit Thakare Pramod Ponkshe Jose Mari Rubi-Cruz

In this issue Joint Chapter Meeting with Changi-Simei Toastmasters Club, p2-3 “The Art of Effective Evaluation” Workshop, p4 “Speech Craft” Workshop, p5 Humorously Speaking, p6 Harmony Semi Annual Convention, p7 Halfway Down the Road, p10

Welcome on board!

New members Sebastian Arackal Louis

Jake Nguyen

Renjila Elinjikottil Rajan

Balaji Rathinasabapathy

Lakshmipriya Sriramulu

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2|Jan 2014|11th Term

Join Chapter Meeting with Changi-Simei Toastmasters Club By Jhelyn Suan, Yokogawa Toastmasters Club President

"The audience is very attentive, appreciative and supportive. It’s a fun, vibrant and memorable chapter

meeting."

Fernando Young, DTM

General Evaluator

AIA Toastmasters Club

Yokogawa Toastmasters Club hosted the first joint chapter meeting for this term last October 30th. It was

indeed a wonderful meeting attended by 25 toastmasters members from various clubs including Changi-

Simei Toastmasters Club and AIA Toastmasters Club. This initiative is one of goals of the EXCO Team for this

year that want our members not only attend our regular chapter meetings but also to attend external

meetings, events and special program arranged by club. As the President, it was my vision from the begin-

ning that “learning from various speakers and leaders, our members will be inspired and become motivated

to improve their skills to become better leader and communicator in their professional, personal and social

life”.

The opening address was delivered by Area S6 Governor Ang Wee Yong said conception of joint meeting was

realized finally. Joint meeting creates more vibrancy, synergy between clubs. Members should go out of their

own club’s comfortable setting to other clubs to be challenged because comfort curbed the growth of person-

al development.

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3|Jan 2014|11th Term

I would like to express my gratitude to the management for graciously approving the fund for this addi-

tional activity and to the Yokogawa Toastmasters Club for continuously supporting the term’s slogan, AIM

(Attend, Inspire, and Motivate). I hope this is only the beginning of our Toastmasters journey in achieving

towards quality chapter meeting. Never get tired of dedicating your time in toastmasters meeting be-

cause learning is FUN. I would like to challenge you to sow an hour of your time by attending our very

own Yokogawa chapter meeting and I will assure you that you will reap of lifetime of benefits.

Let’s not forget to AIM high, achieve higher!

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4|Jan 2014|11th Term

“The Art of Effective Evaluation” Workshop By Michael Wee by Sivakumar Gopalan

One of the goals targeted by Yokogawa Toastmasters Club for this term is to organize workshops for the

benefit of our club members. We conducted the first workshop “The Art of Effective Evaluation” on Sep-

tember 18th 2013. It was coached by a very seasoned Toastmaster, who is a two-time District level Speech

Champion, distinguished toastmaster (DTM) and also our club’s advisor, Michael Wee.

During 45 minutes of the workshop, Michael introduced different skills, from very basic to advance, on how

to give feedback and evaluate a speech, how to encourage a speaker to keep on delivering quality speech-

es. It was a challenging task to give a workshop in such a short time but Michael kept it within schedule ex-

cellently.

Hand-outs were provided and the audience found they were very useful to connect closely with the coach

and to fully understand the contents of the workshop. The hand-outs were crafted in a brilliant way such

that the audience needed to closely pay attention in order to fill in the blanks.

In summary, the content was divided into three sections. The first section informed about three types of

approach to evaluation with their advantages and disadvantages, they are:

-Tell and Sell Method

-Tell and Listen method

-Problem Solving Method;

The second part consisted of the key behaviours of evaluators and the last section mentioned about how to

change one’s evaluation behaviour.

The audience learned the key behavioural aspects of evaluators while evaluating a speech. Some of the key

aspects are, for example, evaluate the speech subjectively even though you might disagree with the opinion

of the speaker, tailor your evaluation to the speaker, learn the speakers’ objectives, show the speaker con-

crete examples how to improve their speeches.

In conclusion, it was a very fruitful workshop and provided an impetus for all the evaluators in future to mo-

tivate, provide positive reinforcements and nourish the self-esteem of the speakers through their evalua-

tions.

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5|Jan 2014|11th Term

“Speech Craft” Workshop by Michael Rodrigues By Sushant Pandita

Michael Rodrigues is a well-known name in Toastmasters International District 80. He is a veteran toast-master and started his journey with SRC Toastmasters club. In his 16 years long association with Toastmas-ters club, as a dedicated and committed Toastmaster, he undertook many roles such as Area Governor (2002-03), Division Governor (2003-04) and even as a District 80 Governor for the term 2011-12. Michael is an educator by nature - an amiable person who always wears a cheerful smile. His dedicated and conscientious efforts for the Toastmasters International and for the society at large can be gauged from his commitment to conduct speech craft workshops for young inmates in the Singapore Prisons as well as for the other Toastmasters Clubs in the district. He conducted a speech craft workshop for Yokogawa Toastmasters Club on 11th Nov 2013. In the workshop Michael articulated how the Toastmasters journey should be mooted as a journey for self-realization and for self-improvement. He mentioned that the Competent Communicator manual (CC Manual), Project 1 speech - The Ice break-er with objectives for the speaker to share his/her experience, background and ambitions with audience should be about “Who am I and Why am I here? Project 2 speech - Organize your speech should be “What am I doing? Where am I going and how am I go-ing to get there? Project 3 speech - Get to the point should be “What is my purpose? What am I committed to do? Am I a human BE-ing or a human DO-ing? Project 4 speech - How to say it should be “To say what one mean and one should mean what one say”. Project 5 speech - Your body speaks should be “To exude confidence, positivity and cheer wherever one goes and whenever one speaks” Project 6 speech - Vocal Variety should be “To outline one’s conduct during the varying circumstances in life” Project 7 speech - Research your topic should be such that “The speech is supported by the research and should not be the research itself”. Project 8 speech - Get comfortable with Visual Aids should be such that “The visual should aid the speech to reach to the audience and should not be a substitute to the speech”. Project 9 speech - Persuade with power should be “To speak persuasively as doing so generates influence and connects with the audience”. The final project, Project 10 speech - Inspire your audience should be “To speak about what one is in-spired since then only can he/she inspire the audience”. Michael reiterated that each project speech in the Toastmasters Club should be a step towards self-realization and self-improvement. He highlighted that one should be mindful before criticizing anyone as when we point a finger to someone we have four fingers pointing back to us. He concluded the workshop by adverting to the significance of being a Toastmaster to ourselves and to the society, and the essence of contributing back to Toastmasters and to the society.

He summed up the workshop by saying

“It's not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived”

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Humorously Speaking by Harry Wong, Yokogawa Toastmasters Club’s Humorous Champion

For as long as long as I can remember I have enjoyed humour of all sorts. I grew up on a diet of British and American humour - Beano & Dandy comics, schoolboy William Brown books and American Mad magazines. Later I discovered BBC radio humour shows like " three cheers" and American TV shows like Jay Leno and Jon Stewart. So when I joined TM I was pleasantly surprised that there were humour contests where I could present my type of humour. Of course it is not always easy to prepare a winning speech as anyone will testify . Humour is hard work that require you to be constantly alert to what is happening around you.to catch the funny side of life and then to present it in a way that will tickle funny bones. The contests have taught me several lessons learnt: You must believe in yourself Must find your own jokes funny

Connect with the audience

Delivery must be clear and confident

An interesting technique I picked up was the use of friendly jibes at someone in the audience. This could be someone who is well-known in TM clubs, like Fernando Young. But don’t overdo it otherwise it be-comes stale and creates discomfort in the audience. For Evaluation Contests points I have gleaned are to: Avoid whitewashing speaker and his speech Avoid the “canned evaluation” approach Show your ability to analyse the test speech Conclude with a summary of your recommendations For all contests though, try to develop staying power; participate in as many contests as you can to gain experience. Avoid the win-at- all- costs attitude; rather have fun in taking part of the contest and your humour will shine through!

Audience laughed at humorous speeches. Humorous Contest’s contestants.

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Harmony Semi Annual Convention by Aruna Kasoju The Semi Annual Convention was held in Whampoa Community Centre on a beautiful Saturday morning of No-vember 15th, 2013. The tickets were sold out way early in advance. Five lucky members from Yokogawa Toast-masters club had the opportunity to attend this event. The first impression when one arrived was of the energetic and excited crowd. Before the humorous contest be-gan, toastmaster Stephanie gave a speech. It was so inspiring because despite being physically disabled she still took up the challenge of public speaking. She effortlessly owned the stage by engaging the audience’s hearts with touching stories of her marriage proposals and interests.

Humorous Speech Contest As soon as the Humorous Contest began the hall was filled with excitement. Each contestant’s approach was so different, yet their speeches all brought joy and laughter to the audience. There was a speech titled ‘Magnificent Creation or Manufacturing Defect’ in which the contestant told us about the differences between Men and Women, of how we get into problems because of our manufacturing defect, how we are liked because we are magnificent creation. Another talked about family matters in his times versus his son’s times. Brought the humour from his very person-al experience about his family, of how much he respected his parents. For the same respect he wanted to become the father so that his status in the family would be elevated. But now things were not the same as it used to be and he was given the least priority at home. We could all relate to the topics very well. Despite being humorous, all of the speeches gave us some real-life lessons to take home, to contemplate and ponder. (Continued on next page)

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Evaluation Contest The Evaluation contest started with a short speech given by a test speaker from Bangkok. She spoke about her fears, inferiority complex with her sister, described by the story of a mouse going around and finding someone stronger than her, but eventually realised that everyone has both strengths and weaknesses. The evaluation contestants evaluated not only the content of her speech, but also the body language, usage of words, quotes and examples. On the whole the speech was great. There was always room for improvement, that if we try to make too many points it’s difficult for the audience to receive and remember. I thoroughly enjoyed the contests with high quality speeches, good food and the vibe in the room. The champions

were those who made us laugh the most, sent a strong message to the audience by simple stories and illustra-

tions and sincerity of the content.

Join us as a member of Yokogawa Toastmaster Club and you will have a chance to attend Toastmaster Conven-

tions of District 80 (Singapore and Thailand).

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9|Jan 2014|11th Term Edited and designed by Amber Nguyen

Register now!

Please contact Vice President Membership Patrick Chan at 98240597 or Patrick.Chan@sg.yokogawa.com

Our meetings are held on every second and fourth Thursday of the month,

from 11:45 am -1:00 pm, at 8th Floor Function Room.

Yokogawa Toastmasters Club Yokogawa Engineering Asia Pte Ltd

5 Bedok South Road Singapore 469270 Tel: (65) 62419933

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10|Jan 2014|11th Term