Should I Repeat Speeches?

“Friends don’t let friends give non-manual speeches.”

You have speech manuals for a reason. They help you focus on different speaking skills, stretching your comfort zone and always encouraging you to improve. Whether a Toastmaster has given three or three hundred speeches, both of them can work on improving and experimenting with vocal variety. And of course, as you go through the manuals, not only do you progress up the educational awards ladder, but it helps your club with the Distinguished Club Program. You can even get credit for a speech outside Toastmasters, if a Toastmaster is watching and evaluating you!

But when is it not right to complete a manual project for a speech?

Technically, TI has no rules against completing a project, just like they have no rules against getting credit for a speech project when the speech went way over time and didn’t remotely meet the listed speech objectives. But because it is allowed doesn’t mean it is suggested; in fact, it is discouraged.

Toastmasters focuses on helping you become a better speaker with every speech you give; having you improve focused skills, having you learn to write many compelling speeches, helping you learn to fit into a fixed time period (which is typically what you would have in any public speaking setting), helping you learn to tailor your material to different audiences.

If you give the same speech over and over, are you getting that benefit? Let’s take an extreme example; suppose a brand-new Toastmaster comes up with one speech, memorizes it word for word, and completes their CC with that one speech–just a very basic speech, not excelling in any Toastmaster qualities.

Will they have learned vocal variety, use of visual aids, body language, persuasive speaking, customizing a speech for their audience, how to write good speeches on any topic, etc.? No.  They will have not learned public speaking; they will have learned a speech.

Of course, you can take a speech for one audience, get feedback, make changes to the speech to make it more effective, and give the new and improved speech again; that is also a valuable speaking skill, learning how to take feedback and improve a speech.

When thinking about repeating a speech and getting credit for it, it’s really a judgment call on your part... what you feel is ethical, what you feel is best for you. Just ask yourself this:

“Am I repeating this speech in the spirit of Toastmasters? Am I giving this speech in the spirit of the project for which I am getting credit? Is repeating this specific speech helping me to become a better Toastmaster?”

Think on that and make your decision–and keep on growing as a speaker!