Learning by doing – Theme of the Toastmasters Meeting on September 27, 2022
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”, Confucius
In our online session we had the pleasure to welcome 15 participants, our honored members and a couple of guests. We were glad to meet Anna from Aalborg Toastmasters, Aaquib and Jawed from India, and Bence from S. Africa, also an experience toastmaster. Lei from the BASF club joined in again and Nadine who recently moved to Mannheim joined us for her first Toastmaster experience. Anna contributed a lot to the evening since she took over one evaluator role.
The toastmaster of the evening, Jeff, briefly explained the structure of the meeting for our guests and led through the theme “learning by doing” which various quotes. He pointed out that Toastmasters is a safe place for people to take risks and learn. It is a safe place to practice and make mistakes. The following team took over roles: Gabi took the timer role, Uli was the Grammarian, Craig did the Ah-counter and Sybille the GE.
“Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first.” — Ray Congdon
As word of the day Sybille chose a saying. Very often you have to learn something new when you are put in a new, difficult situation without preparation. The saying is: “to be thrown in at the deep end.”Florin did a good job taking over the Table Topics master role for the first time. He asked four questions relating to the theme.
1. Can you remember any situation where you learned from making a mistake“. Gabi shared with us her difficulties in passing the theoretical test when taking the driving license exam. In the end she has become very successful and can now drive any motorized vehicle no matter which size.
2. Can you remember a situation where learning by doing worked out very well for you? In her personal story, Nadine explained how she developed her expertise in music, first copying, learning from others and then creating her own music.
3. People learn by observing, reading, listening … What is your favorite way of learning? Bence told us that it is important to get the basics first but then try to solve the problems hands on. Research has proven that actively working at a subject is promises more success.
4. Learning and having fun. Is this a contraction for you? Lei had been raised in China. There children are told that hard work makes the fortune. The focus lies on competing to achieve the next degree. Fun is not regarded as necessary. We feel sorry for the Chinese kids.
We had two prepared speeches. Both speakers were working on the project presentation mastery #4-6 – Question and answer session.
JP gave us an “In introduction to Romania”, focusing on facts, food and fun. He showed his enthusiasm for Romania and interacted very professionally in the Q&A session with the audience. He gave very extensive answers and made people curious about Romania. His speech was evaluated by Florian.
Poorana spoke about “How we make an Indian curry from scratch”. In his speech his passion for cooking was oozing out, we could even smell the curry. He had a great intro to his speech and kept us hooked on to the dish. He answered all questions extensively. His speech was evaluated by Anna.
Sybille as GE was very happy about the evaluations. Both evaluators used the sandwich technique – say what you liked about the speech, give a few hints for improvements, say what you liked best.Both evaluators gave concrete examples, eg. Florian suggested to take a more catchy title for JP’s speech.
Sybille gave feedback to all roles taken in the evening. The important timer function was well organized by Gabi despite some misunderstandings regarding the timing of the two long speeches. Craig again pleased us with precise report about all the filler words used – Craig really is a great listener – he does not miss a single filler word. Watch out next time and practice!!Jeff did an excellent job as toastmaster of the evening making everyone feel at home.
This evening we could vote for three functions. The best TT award went to Nadine. Congratulations. The best evaluator was Florian and the best speaker Poorana. Congratulation to all winner. Thank you to everyone taking part in the meeting which was again a very joyful and inspiring evening.
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it”, Pablo Picasso
(And many thanks again to our club President Sybille for this great recap!)
Please join us for our next meeting on the 11th of October. This meeting will be in-person at our regular meeting venue. And please note: starting on September 13th and at least till the end of the year we will meet in-person for the first meeting of the month (on the 2d Tuesday) and online for the second meeting (on the 4th Tuesday). Our in-person venue is the Buergerhaus Neckarstadt-West, Lutherstrasse 15-17, 68169 Mannheim.
Best Toastmaster greetings, Jeff
Mannheim Int. Toastmasters
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Here a photo of the meeting:
