How and when? What would your friends tell about you if a third person asks them about you? Get that information You will be amazed by the feedback What are your aspirations? Future goals if any — its ok if you hate goals? What are your interests? What do you like? What is your message to the world? Yes, you can become a world leader now. Ok, you read them. Now what? I know it is a lazy feeling to write the stories. Your brain is an amazing entity.
Check out my sample icebreaker speech and check out the flow. Please use this as a model speech and start with your icebreaker speech soon! Speech Script and analysis of my toastmasters Icebreaker speech: Note: Analysis is in bold Title: My Story Starting off with an amusing story with a little bit of curiosity helps to engage the audience. This boy was not willing to get up from the floor.
Finally, he had to be dragged to home all along the road by his sisters. The characters in the story were my three lovely sisters and I. Introducing parents here. You can expand here if needed. Here I am answering the questions about my school education. Flying kites was also another great sport of mine. I am mentioning some traits of mine that I wanted to share. I believe that helping people in their difficulty is the most satisfying feeling. Telling a story that was close to my heart to support that point.
Techniques for Delivering your toastmasters Icebreaker speech: So, you have your script ready? Good job. Steps to practice an Ice Breaker: Go to a mirror with your script. Read out as loud as you can. The reason I am telling you to do this is because I want you to get comfortable hearing and projecting your own voice. If you have zero or less stage experience, the above exercise might be really helpful. If you want to use a wall-size mirror, fitness center mirrors in your community would be really cool for this activity.
Even though you can use notes, I recommend against using them. A simple technique to help you avoid using notes is as follows. Connect the images of the speech in your mind and speak out we will use a better technique in the next project. In the speech example given in the next section, if you look closely, you can dice the speech into frames.
Third picture — Playing in the streets, flying kites, and hanging around with no aim in life! Once you are comfortable with the script — deliver this speech to your family, close friends or anyone who will listen to your speech! Steps to take on the day of your speech : Get excited to deliver your story. I think if you can do this one thing — you will be awesome on stage! Ask your club member or fellow Toastmaster to record your Ice Breaker speech.
A minute before you are called on stage, your heart might race, hands might shiver, legs might wobble, you might feel the urge to go to the restroom, and all weird things will happen.
If these things do not happen, either you have some experience in public speaking or you are a born speaker! When they do happen, rub your left palm with your right hand for seconds and vice versa. Bring your heart rate to normal. Slowly, breathe in and breathe out. Now go ahead and enjoy the delivery. Steps to take after you deliver your speech: After your speech, listen to your evaluations.
Get feedback of your speech. Let me be frank — all evaluations are not perfect. Example — if your current problem is wobbling legs, you might get feedback on voice modulation as well. In such a case, you have to work on overcoming wobbling legs before working on voice modulation.
Collect your video recording. You might be happy or not so happy with your speech delivery. Do not get discouraged or form opinions by watching your video. Every speaker started from somewhere. Your recording is the precious information to help you grow.
Reader Response. Comments: 43 Blog links: Article Category: Speechwriting. The Toastmasters Speech Series. Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes.
He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada. Twitter: 6minutes. Similar Articles You May Like Toastmasters 17 articles.
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Oct 8th, Bren Murphy says:. Nov 7th, Margy Sneeden says:. Jan 14th, Raymond Jones says:. Jan 15th, Tracy Waters says:. Jun 1st, Martin Bila says:. Jul 1st, Marvin Wiley says:. I once heard an Icebreaker where a college student spoke about how he used to love playing cricket as a schoolboy, moved to the guitar in high school and is eventually now passionate about working in the finance sector.
Three narratives that introduced us to three different part of his life but he bound them at the end by saying how passions change with time and age and with more exposure to reality. Here I have seen people bring forth the most interesting anecdotes and explain them in detail and via that introducing themselves. I once heard a speaker build his Icebreaker on his tough battle against smoking and how leaving it changed him.
I wrote mine around my experience of changing cities for college and how this experience changed me. This type of Icebreaker usually leaves you with a greater room for creativity to thrive and the wackier the experience the more attention the audience will give. This might sound funny, why would you need to research for a speech where you have to introduce yourself but believe me you need to. Researching also means that you reach out to your mentor and other club members who have just done their speeches.
Walk up to them and ask for tips. A school senior who has been a two time Ted Speaker once introduced me to what I now call the formula.
The formula expands to illustrate that for every 1 minute that you spend onstage you speak not more than words and for every words you speak there has to be 1 hour of research, writing, editing and rewriting that should go in. The second part of the formula, the research and editing bit you may want to save for later projects but the first part surely implies here.
This is not true. Having a non-quote beginning is great but you can make your way around a quote one also. Let me take you through both. You can begin a speech with a question, or an absurd fact or a statistic or a randomly thrown statement. These all work as engaging beginnings. You can work your way around these then.
For ex. These often work in terms of the fact that they engage the audience instantaneously for the first few seconds and then a strong narrative from thereon can take off. Instead of using just one quote he used three similar ones and managed to evoke curiosity. You can also to use three quotes that are completely unrelated to each other and still manage to evoke curiosity. The power of three can be used in any way and not just in narratives.
Remember, Toastmasters as a platform will never curb your creativity unless you resort to talking about religion, sex and politics something that is not permitted at any Toastmasters club worldwide. This is where the major chunk of your speech lies.
Your stories take a full-fledged shape here and hence this requires the most amount of attention. Just draft it as naturally as you can and run it by your mentor or another Toastmaster friend and take their opinion. Ensure that the start of your story is at the end of the introduction and then unraveling in the body. The sample speeches attached will give you a better idea of how to go about this. Make sure the transitions are fluid and seem seamless. There is no shortcut here but the repeated practice of writing and rewriting and editing.
You can always seek help from your mentor or also any other Non-Toastmaster friend who you think is good with writing. Personally, in my experience, the speeches that have stayed with me long after the speaker gets off stage have been the ones that have had the speakers conclude in a positive, cheery, happy and uplifting note.
Always remember, most studies state the attention span of the audience is the greatest in the first seven seconds and then the last seven. Check the sample speeches attached. They will give you a better idea of it. The title is the first thing the audience will hear so make sure it catches their attention and makes them want to hear more.
It should be aimed at whetting their appetite and leave them asking for more. The wackier the title the better it is. For example, I based my speech on my experience of changing cities for college but I titled it Oreo Cheesecake. Remember to tie it in the speech somewhere, either in the start of the end of make a reference to it.
Humour is one of the easiest ways to connect with the audience and that is all you would want to do with the icebreaker. I would suggest try inculcating a little humour. It is difficult to add humour but not altogether impossible. I have attached some tips that helped me. A fellow club member who has been a corporate comedian for almost seven ears once told me this. He said that forcing humour into a speech is the worst thing a speaker can bring onto himself.
Humour should stem from real-life experiences that have led to laughter and the more relatable they seem the more likely the chance of the audience laughing. Since the Icebreaker is all about your story, there can be no better chance to use this tip. I used an instance if sibling squabble in my speech that managed to evoke laughter.
Ensure you use the tools of vocal variety and taking pauses at the right moments for the humour to sink in. This will come with practice so make sure you rehearse it with different people before you deliver. Most of the work is going to rewriting and editing. A cousin who is also a creative writing tutor with school children once taught me a very simple thing. It is merely you putting thoughts to words. The more I toastmaster, the stronger my belief in her words get.
There never was and can never be an ideal speechwriting prep routine. Everyone has a different way of working and the only way to understand what works for you is by letting yourself write, fall and falter and then revise your methods. For now, I can tell you what works for me.
I usually build an ideation map that has the main points of what and how I want my speech to look like. I then do a first draft. This is someplace where I let my thoughts flow to words naturally without worrying about the word limit or the grammatical part. Once I am through with this, I usually let the write up ferment for some time. Depending on when the speech is scheduled to be delivered and my college routine, this period is usually anything between a few hours to a few days.
You will feel the writing blossoming into a clearer and more accurate version of what you had in mind. The more drafts you give the better it is. The catch here is to not to keep mindlessly drafting and redrafting but also to run them by other people for their opinions.
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