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In order to provide for people who enjoy competitive speaking, and in
order to showcase the best, Toastmasters clubs hold speech contests as many
as five times a year. Each contest starts at the club level and works its
way up through Area and Division to the District. Three contests go on to
Regional and one goes on to the World Convention each August.
The contests are:
- Tall Tales - 3 to 5
minutes in length. A tall tale, which must be original (you can't use
someone else's material). Goes as far as the District level in most
Districts.
- Table Topics - 1 to
2 minutes in length. Impromptu speaking. All contestants are taken out
of the room and brought back in one by one to speak on the *same*
topic, which should be general in nature and not require specialized
knowledge which some contestants might have while others might not.
Since no contestant hears the topic before his turn to speak on it,
you can judge their impromptu speaking abilities by the way in which
each person's effort stacks up against the others. Goes as far as the
District level in most Districts.
- Evaluation - 2 to 3
minutes in length. A target speaker gives a speech which all the
evaluation contestants are to evaluate. The contestants are taken from
the room and given five minutes to prepare their speeches and make
notes. Then, their notes are taken away and they are brought back into
the room one by one (at which time the contestant gets his notes back)
to deliver their oral evaluation of the target speech. Since no
contestant hears what another said about the target speech, the judges
can compare the analytical abilities of the contestants. Goes as far as
the Regional level in most Regions.
- Humorous speech - 5
to 7 minutes. Humorous speaking, which must be original. Year after
year, people hear the rules read to them and then stand up and present
Bill Cosby routines and then act puzzled when they're disqualified.
It's supposed to be a *speech*, not a monologue, and it MUST be
original. It should also be "clean." So-called "blue
humor" will get you zero points in the
"appropriateness" column of the judges' forms. In other words,
it should be a five-to-seven minute speech with a lot of humor value,
but ALSO displaying good speechmaking abilities. Goes as far as the
Regional level in most Regions.
- International Speech
- 5 to 7 minutes. Any topic at all, so long as it's original. Can be
funny, serious, whatever. It should be the best speech you can give,
and it must be original. Did I mention that it must be original? Don't
do what so many speakers do and crib at length from someone else's
works and then expect that no one in the audience will smell a rat. The
reason this contest is called "International Speech" instead
of "General Speech" or "Miscellaneous Speech" is
because it's the only one of the five contests that goes as far as the
World level. Each August, winners from the eight Regions and the
Overseas clubs (9 contestants in all) compete at the World Convention
in the World Championship of Public Speaking.
Each contest has a set of rules which mandate originality and lay down
the procedures. If you go over your time limit by thirty seconds, you're
eliminated. If you go UNDER your time limit by thirty seconds, you're
eliminated -- except in Table Topics, where you must speak at least one
minute, no less. Out in the audience, there'll be a set of judges,
scattered among the audience, each with a points form that they use to rate
you against what a winning effort should be and how you stack up against
the others. There's a different form for each contest, since each contest
involves different skills.
Any member in good standing (i.e. you've got your dues paid) can compete
when the contests come around -- except for current District and
International officers and candidates for same -- except for the
International Speech Contest. To compete in the International Speech
Contest, you must have joined on or before the previous July 1, and you
must have given at least six manual speeches towards your CTM. This
requirement is intended to prevent professional speakers from joining
Toastmasters out of the blue solely to compete toward the World
Championship of Public Speaking. District and International officers are
barred so the judges won't be swayed by their titles.
It varies from District to District. Some Districts have two contests in
the fall, one in the winter, and two in the spring. Others have two in the
fall, two in the winter, and one in the spring. All that matters as far as
Toastmasters International is concerned is that all Districts must have
held their Evaluation, Humorous, and International Speech contests by the
time the Regional conferences roll around in June.
At the club level, sometimes all you get is a handshake and some
applause. By the time you've gotten up to Division and District levels,
you're getting some fairly impressive trophies.
This situation came up recently in District 37 (North Carolina). A club was told that
the official District rules for the Humorous Speech Contest mandated
similar eligibility requirements for the Humorous contest as for the
International Speech contest, to wit, all contestants had to have been
members on or before July 1 of the current year, and had to have given at
least four (I.S. requires six) manual speeches. According to the District
officers involved, these were the official rules for all Humorous Speech
contests held in North Carolina,
and even though the official rules mailed to all clubs by Toastmasters
International mandated that the only eligibility requirement be membership
in good standing in a club in good standing, the District 37 rules applied
nonetheless.
The club President in question checked with TI WHQ and was told in no
uncertain terms that any District which holds speech contests must use the
official Toastmasters International rules and that Districts are not
permitted to change the rules as published by Toastmasters International in
any way.
This policy of course doesn't apply to contests the District has
invented on its own, but for the Big 5 (International, Humorous, Table
Topics, Tall Tales, and Evaluation), if your District has changed the time
limits, eligibility requirements, or policy regarding originality (one
District supposedly waived the originality requirement for the Tall Tales
contest), they're in the wrong. If they don't believe this to be the case,
ask them to contact Toastmasters International World Headquarters
themselves. They'll be swiftly corrected.
Why is this important, by the way? Simple: the only official rules most
clubs get for the contests are the ones TI themselves mail out. It would be
tremendously discouraging to be belatedly told that the rules your club had
used for the contest you won were not the official rules as practiced in
YOUR District, and thus, you can't compete at the next level. In many
cases, 'Official District Rules' are known only by those who have a
dog-eared photocopy that's five years old (as was the case in District 37).
That's wrong. If your District has changed the rules, tell them they can't,
and if they say "Sure we can," let TI World HQ know.
Contests are fun, but it's important to run them the same way everywhere
around the world. Fairness and a level playing field aren't just luxuries.
They're required.
Districts can hold whatever contests they want in addition to the five
sanctioned International contests listed above. However, these vary from
District to District and it would not be possible to list all the various
speech contests held throughout the world of Toastmasters here in this FAQ.
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