Toastmasters Speech Number 4 Hints

Toastmasters Project four will be 'judged' by the evaluator from two main angles: use of vivid words and use of rhetorical devices.

 

Use of vivid words: Be generous with adjectives and adverbs. Let no noun stand alone. For example if you have a man, make him a short man, tall man or fast man. Don't just say I was five years old. Instead, show whether you were slender, plump, dark, tall, cheerful, and happy or morose. How did you look during the holidays? Caked head to toe in black cotton soil, marinated in slimy red soil and looking every inch like pygmy warriors?

 

Rhetorical devices: I recommend you count how many of the devices you have employed in your speech. But space them well and don't over use them.

1. Similes: compare two items using the word like or as e.g.  sweet like honey; cunning as a fox; Bouncing and bumping downhill like a loaded spring.
   
2. Metaphor: compare two unlike things (without using like or as) e.g. at twelve I was a chef when I cooked.
   
3. Alliteration: is the repetition of consonant sound at the beginning of words in a sentence. e.g. petty pre-primary poets; cute clever Cate.
   
4. Triads: is to say things in threes. In the city, the roads were brightly lit, transport to school was provided, shoes were polished.
   
5. Repetition: I was never worried, I was never perturbed, I was never bothered by anything
   
6. Onomatopoeia is the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it e.g after the meeting vroom! the MP left while po-po-po-po the teachers followed.
   

 

An entertaining speech of about six hundred words is good for this project.