Written Evaluation Special
This meeting was a themed one. We focused on how we go about providing written evaluation, especially the numerical ratings of different points about a prepared speech.
In Toastmasters, we do not have a teacher. Instead, members provide evaluation and feedback to one another. The evaluation takes two forms, verbal and written, and for written evaluation, we use an evaluation form. On the second page of the evaluation form, there are eight or so criteria such as clarity, vocal variety, and audience awareness. We are to rate each criterion on a scale of 1 to 5. One thing to note about these ratings is that standards are higher than we normally expect. Out of five ratings, three should be regarded as "Accomplished," which is a very good rating. A rating of 4 means that the speaker Excelled and a rating of 5 is "Exemplary," which means the speaker has no room for improvement. This is really hard to give because there IS a lot of room for improvement for us ordinary speakers. Even a World Champion of Public Speaking, the winner of the final stage of Toastmasters' International Speech Contest, has some room for improvement. Sometimes, though, people tend to be too lenient with these numerical ratings. Some of us easily give a rating of 5 to our peers. That's the whole reason we held this meeting this time. We wanted to have a shared understanding that we need to be careful not to be too lenient in our ratings because, after all, we are in Toastmasters to get better. A high rating may be useful to motivate our peers, but we want to be better than that. Our true motivation should come from the sense of achievement, not from a shallow lenient inflated rating.
Though we did not have enough time for the discussion, we shared our views and came to a shared understanding of how we should go about allocating points to those criteria.
Long-awaited ribbons
At today's meeting, some members were presented the Best Speaker and other ribbons they've earned over time. We would have awarded them with those ribbons much earlier, on the day they earned them, but due to some technical glitches with the Toastmasters International website and other reasons, we were short of ribbons to give to members. Since the ribbons we had ordered finally arrived, we were able to give the members the ribbons they deserve. Congratulations!
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