"Ann, that was an absolutely fantastic speech. You gave us about 10 tips on how to improve our skills in using a microphone and concluded with a great anecdote about your own experience with a 'dead' microphone. A terrific speech. Well done."

At face value, this evaluation sounds enthusiastic, positive, encouraging - just what a good Toastmasters evaluation is meant to be. Or is it? On closer inspection, this type of evaluation says very little of real help to me, the speaker.

I would not benefit greatly from this evaluation for two reasons: First, it relies heavily on superlatives and generalities. Expressions such as "great," "fantastic," "excellent," and "terrific" are trite and too broad to be of value in evaluating my progress as a speaker.

When these expressions are applied indiscriminately to evaluations, we are doing our members a disservice. On one hand, we can over-value the performance of novice speakers by suggesting they've attained a standard higher than is the case. On the other hand, we may under-value the competent speaker by using vague expressions that give no clear indication of the speaker's true competence.

The second reason I wouldn't benefit greatly from this type of evaluation is that it relies on describing the content and does not analyze the speech to identify what I do well and where improvements could be made.

Skill 1: Build An Evaluation Vocabulary So how can we provide positive, realistic evaluations of a speech? One way is to develop a more extensive evaluation vocabulary, one that covers much finer gradations of quality. A dip into a thesaurus reveals many alternative, common superlatives. For example: "awesome," "grand," "majestic," "consummate," "supreme," "top," "surpassing," "fine," "exceptional," "splendid," "polished," "elegant," "quality," "treasure," "gem," "masterpiece," "superior," "splendid," "first-class," "first-rate," "deluxe," "outstanding," "sound," "sterling," "Olympian," - you get the idea.

For a truly exceptional speech, praise the speaker by saying: "Margaret, tonight you gave us a consummate performance, one that for me surpasses all your previous speeches." The feedback clearly indicates that the speech was much better than just "great" or "terrific." If a speech is good, but not necessarily "fantastic," the evaluation could take the following path: "Jim, you gave us a fine speech tonight, one characterized by sound structure and enthusiastic delivery."

In addition to the above list of words, various colloquial expressions can be used to signal an evaluator's enthusiasm for a speech. These colloquialisms include: "bobby-dazzler,"(the author is from Australia) "humdinger," "knock-out," "pearl," "tiptop," "smashing," "over the top," etc. These can be woven into an evaluation to give a novice speaker positive and encouraging feedback that offers a realistic appraisal of the speaker's skills.

For example: "Robert has given us a splendid third manual speech, providing us with a sound illustration of how to organize material. The introduction was a gem - a vivid story that captured our imagination. I felt the story could add even greater value to the speech by being used as a linking pin at other points in the speech. For example, the speech structure could be strengthened to assist the audience's understanding by using the story theme to signpost the four key points. For me, the icing on the cake was Robert's first-class use of facial expressions to illustrate various emotional reactions. That's a prime quality to build on in future speeches.

I believe you can see the value of expanding your evaluation vocabulary by this example. Now back my second point:

Skill 2: Analyse The Speech A second trap evaluators often fall into is to describe and summarize the speech. Since the audience already has listened to the speech, it is neither appropriate nor useful to spend time retelling it. Evaluation requires analysis of the speech, not description of the content. While the content may have been riveting, the speaker needs to understand how this was achieved and why the audience found it so interesting. Many speakers have fascinating speech topics, but ruin them in the delivery.

To properly evaluate a speech, you need to react to the speaker's presentation with constructive suggestions for improvement, using the Evaluation Guide provided with each project. Let the speaker know how you perceived the speech and what impact it had on you. Identify the speaker's strengths as you see them and provide suggestions for improvement.

To illustrate the difference between describing content and analyzing a speech, compare these two evaluations: "I was fascinated by Fiona's speech which gave us a detailed account of the impact feral cats have on our native fauna. She told us there are possibly 12 million cats living in the bush, each killing at least 1,000 native animals a year. And she informed us that it's not just feral cats that are a problem. Domestic cats are responsible for reducing some of our favorite native birds�"

An evaluation based on analysis, rather than description, might go something like this: "I haven't given much thought to the impact my pet cat could be having on our wildlife until I heard Fiona's No.2 speech tonight. I like a speech that triggers my interest in a new subject. The statistics she quotes are staggering and brought home to me what a huge problem we have with feral cats. By quoting well-researched, authoritative details and displaying vivid videos, she built a convincing case. In fact, she changed my perception of cats. This combination of authoritative detail and powerful visuals shows me that Fiona takes this problem seriously and thoroughly understands its dimension�"

The evaluation notes that Fiona's speech raised awareness about an important issue. The evaluator might then go on to let Fiona know her strengths and suggest ways to improve. This requires further analysis of the speech. You can use the following checklist to guide your analysis:

Speech Objectives

Content: