What I learned from Advancity Toastmasters - Monday Meeting

I was the Grammarian giving word of the day. I asked if there was a whiteboard. Yes. Unfortunately, nothing to write on it. Whiteboards, Flipcharts and Pens Even a meeting run by experienced toastmasters can be lacking in the basics. You must take your own print out of the word of the day, your own erasable marker for a whiteboard. Roles Come prepared with cards or props needed to do any role. They may decide somebody is absent, or somebody needs to do the role which you thought was yours. Advanced English Speakers And Foreigners and Singlish Prepare for a group with poor grasp of English who cannot deal with a complex advanced word or idea such as oxymoron. My word oxymoron was not used by anybody. A hard word to grasp when you can't see it written up. (On the other hand, a university group all looked it up on the internet on their smart phones and every speaker or functionary used it several times. The word and an example two or three times in speeches and roles. PRINTING I went home and printed the word. After a day's delay getting black ink for the printer. Why had the printer run out of ink? If it is not in use for a while the ink runs dry. The person in charge had let it run dry. If you are away from the office, no point in refilling it with expensive fresh ink if it will soon be left unused to run dry. Download a form for introductions and write an introduction to yourself to give to the Toastmaster Of The Evening. Angela Lansbury, CL, ACG

Exquisite Language Evaluation and Table Topic at Bishan Toastmasters Club

At Bishan Toastmasters Club in Singapore last week (January 2016) I was invited to be Language Evaluator, which we would call Grammarian in England. My first thought was that word of the day could be Oxymoron, a word used by best-selling Singaporean writer and former English teacher Catherine Lim, describing her novel title Howling Silence.

However, the club members might find that too difficult and obscure. I was given a dictionary and found the word 'exquisite', a positive word, which proved popular.

To my delight, I won a ribbon for best table topic.

Angela Lansbury, CL, ACG, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Word Of The Day

What is your favourite word of the day? The epitome of the ambiguity of the English language, a word the protagonist of your novel might use, when driven to extremis, meeting his nemesis. 

Reminder to myself:

• Take to every meeting your manual and, in case you are called upon to be grammarian. Attach to the back of the manual two or three words of the day.

• On a weekend or evening, or day, when you have no other work, create some words of the day, written in large felt tip pen, or printed large.

• When reading newspapers and magazines note down unusual or interesting words.

• Check new words in the dictionary.

Depending on the language abilities of the audience, you might search for three syllable words with Latin or Greek roots, explaining the word's origin.

For example:



On looking in the dictionary for extremes, I found exuberant.
Today I have found:

acme
anagram
arachnophobia - fear of spiders
bravado
caution
destitute
disinterested - contrast with uninterested
egregious
epitome
extremis
exuberant
nemesis
iconic
ode - poem of praise?
oxymoron - contradiction, sometimes for irony -
recompense

Many technical terms will be new to some in the audience, especially if you are teaching in a school:
Anthropology, anthropolgist
ode - poem of praise
sociology
sonnet - Elizabethan or Shakespearean: rhyming scheme - abab cdcd ee (Demonstrate and explain - I once gave a talk about poetry and an Indian in the audience told me he did not understand what the letters meant.)
statistician