Burrard Toastmasters
Vancouver's leading business-oriented public speaking club
Club Speeches

Speech Evaluation Tips

By Sharleen Suszezwiez
2005-2006 Division H Evaluation Contest Winner
  • Look at Judge's Guide & Ballot for the International and Evaluation Speech Contests to see where to focus your speech evaluation and what criteria you will be judged on.
  • Discover an evaluation technique that works for you. 
  • Practice, practice, practice.
  • Start and end on a positive note.
  • Discover in each speech you evaluate, your personal connection to the speech and/or the speaker.
  • Be creative! But have some logic & structure to your evaluation. 
  • Focus on key points (the "gems") & get to the point.
  • Provide feedback to the speaker on the good points & improvement points, prefaced with "I think/What I'd like to see/What I liked…"
  • Keep a good, steady pace. Be careful not to speed through the evaluation.
  • Allocate your time to address speech structure, delivery & audience reception components.
  • Consider the room size & time it takes to address a larger audience.
  • Don't over prepare, rather let your ideas flow.
  • Address the entire audience during the evaluation since everyone is learning from the evaluation, ie. "The speaker was effective…" rather than directing the evaluation only to the speaker, ie. "You were effective…"
  • Tell what you learned from the speech.

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