Dear all,

I very much enjoyed our last meeting which was a bit different from usual. Julia was our Toastmaster for the evening, and orchestrated the agenda with a baby toy theme as we said goodbye to Zhenzhen who has now gone on maternity leave. All the best Zhenzhen and thank you for all your contributions to the club in the last years!! Julia was helped by Donna, who was our timer for the first time, and Kate our grammarian who introduced the word of the day: ‘to collaborate’. The first speech of the evening was delivered by Anqi. She had just returned from celebrating Chinese new year in her home country and described how she misses her family. She gave a very moving speech about the difficulties of living far away from her family and the strange feeling of getting used to missing them. Lan delivered her 5th speech of the competent communicator manual. As she is getting married later this year her speech focused on all the questions arising when getting married in the 21st century such as who proposes to who, what names will the children take and how they will take care of them.

Siobhan delivered a speech on the 8 styles of leadership and encouraged us all to have a look at the definitions of leadership styles from Toastmasters International. She made the comparison between TM definitions and the ancient Greek persuasion styles of ethos, logos and pathos – all three combined make a great leader! We did not have any Table topics this evening, but instead Carrie provided us with a useful summary of the new education system pathways. Have you started already? Why not give it a try?! The award for best speaker was won by Anqi and Simonetta won the award for best evaluator. Well done also to Donna for her first role!

Announcements:

Our club contest takes place at our next meeting on 6 March, please join us for a an evening of fun! The area contest will take place on Wednesday 20 March, and there will be no club meeting that evening. It is time to renew your membership fees!!! You should all have received the email from Rowena to renew your membership and pay the £90. Please do it as soon as possible so we don’t have to come and chase you. Thank you. I hope to see many of you at the contest!

Best wishes,

Esmé
Please click here for details of our next club meeting

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