Table Topics Master Joyce Hu CC CL will warm up our speaking skills by challenging us to give impromptu speeches.

Remember the grammarian report that kept the audience laughing throughout it?  Larry Schuster will be training at the District 85 Annual Conference in May.  We’re honored that he’ll give CAT a preview of this workshop!

Learn how to use humor and exaggeration to correct and improve grammar problems in your club. In this workshop, you will find that a grammarian’s report no longer needs to be an unmemorable list of grammar and word usage errors. Using humor, Larry will show how to make routine grammar and word usage problems come alive in a way you will not forget.  Check out his very new Shanghai Grammar Blog.

We’ll have speeches from Aky, KC and guest Fei Hong from the Leadership club.

Our newest member Carmel Valencia CC CL will share her thoughts on our meeting during her GE report.  IEs include Susan Zhou DTM, Carlo Wolff ACB ALB, and Bill Wang ACB.

Don’t miss this meeting!

The winners and representatives to Area F61 speech contest on April 11 are:

• International Speech Contest: Carlo Wolff (1st), Jenny Ni (2nd)
• Table Topic Speech Contest: Carlo Wolff (1st), Joyce Hu (2nd)
• Mandarin Showcase: Joyce Hu

International Speech Contest: Jenny Ni, Carlo Wolff

Table Topic Speech Contest: Jenny Ni, Carlo Wolff, Spike Gu, Minnie Li, Joyce Hu

Mandarin Showcase: Joyce Hu

Contest Chair: Susan Zhou

Chief Judge: Beate Richter

Summiting Session – Susan Zhou, DTM on Passion

SUPER Table Topics will be held again! Listen to Minnie from Novartis 1st give a 5 to 7 minute speech, speaking off the cuff. Super TT evaluator is Jenny Ni, CC/CL.

Prepared Speakers:
Joyce Hu, CC/CL                     Evaluator: Andrew Wong, ACB 
Bill Wang, ACB                          Evaluator: Jenny Ni, CC/CL  
Carlo Wolff:  ACB & ALB       Evaluator: Susan Zhou, DTM

My question for you is – what can CAT help YOU with this year?

Is your goal to get another 10 speeches down? Do you want to compete in the international speech contest? Become a better trainer? Complete your DTM? Put on a TM event?

Do you want to train on a specific topic? Or give a speech to an advanced group to receive a bit tougher evaluation?

Please let us know! CAT can provide support in many ways!

We’re looking forward to 2010!

Summitting Session – Carlo Wolff, ACB & CL on “Creating the Best Club Climate”

Table Topics Master – Marco Meng, CC & CL

Speeches
* Spike Gu, ACB & CL with “The Patriot” from the storytelling manual
* Guest speaker Helen Zhang, ACB & CL of Amazing Fridays with “It’s Now.” from the humorously speaking manual
* Emily Minor, CC & CL with “Couchsurfing: Changing the World One Couch at a Time” from the speaking to inform manual

General Evaluator – Joyce Hu, CC & CL

Individual Evaluator – Susan Zhou, DTM
Date: 2009-09-10

• TME – Bill Wang, ACB
• TTM – Raf Verheyen
• Speakers – Susan Zhou, DTM and John Ng, CC
• GE – Jenny Ni, CC & CL
• Left-Brain Right-Brain Evaluation Team – Linda Ma, CC and Joyce Hu, CC & CL

Get ready to experience the first session of SUPER TABLE TOPICS!

You’ll also see Spike as TME at our next meeting…

We’re also pleased that Joyce Hu CC CL will be representing CAT for the Mandarin Showcase at the Area contest.

Congratulations to you both and thank you to our judges from People’s Square and Shanghai Leadership and MSD Clubs!

On March 12, we inducted John Ng and Linda Ma as new CAT members.  We’re glad to have you!

We enjoyed a series of great presentations at CAT last night. Here are some of the things I noted from the training on organizing your speech from Sam Jones DTM:

1. Are going to entertain, persuade, inspire or inform? Keep your speech aligned with that purpose.
2. Beyond the basic outline (introduction, body and conclusion), look for alternative structures. Sure, there’s the basic three points, but there are other structures too – like compare and contrast, time (past-present-future), and telling a story (with a lesson).

A few other things that I noted from the evening:

• Delete everything you can. If you are evaluating a speaker and don’t have something to say on a point, just move to the next point rather than saying that you don’t have anything to add. Focus on what you are there to say and do your best to skip the rest.
• Test humor one-on-one. To find out whether a joke is funny, try telling the joke without much emotion to someone in general conversation – if they smile, you might have something worth using (thanks Warwick).
• You might feel like you don’t have enough time, but don’t bother telling the audience – they probably won’t learn better by you telling them that you’re rushing. Instead, act like you have all the time in the world.
• And thanks to Emily Minor CC CL for demonstrating how when you are introducing a speaker, you can just keep clapping until they get to the front of the room – it’s a simple courtesy but looks very professional.

For me, one of the highlights of the evening was having the majority of DTMs in China in the room at one time, something that usually only happens at Conferences and Conventions. Our whole individual evaluation team consisted of DTMs – Rebecca Hong (also Lt Gov Education and Training), Warwick John Fahy (past Chairman of China) and  Sam Jones (our Immediate Past President). This yielded what I think was the most rewarding, stimulating and valuable evaluations session I can remember – thanks to each of you for your contributions!

Videos from the night to come soon.

Our next meeting is 8 January next year when we’ll have a training on body language delivered by Spike Gu ACB CL.