Yow Kia

From the early of August until to the end of September, it’s a humorous speech contest season in Singapore Toastmasters Clubs.

Up to now, my humorous contest speech – “Money, money, money” has been presented 4 times in different places to different groups of people. Every time, I’ve made some changes to test the laughter results. I found that humorous speech is like a trial-and-error experiment. You really don’t know whether the audience will laugh until you have presented the speech.

Here is the summary of the comments that I’ve received in different occasions.

First occasion (20th of August)
I was a test speaker in Brilliant Advanced TMC’s evaluation contest. I was evaluated by 5 evaluation contestants. The comments that given to me were i)the message that I intended to give to the audience was not clear ii) some parts could be more humorous if the body movement was exaggerated iii) some of my pronunciation was not clear. Overall, I was commented as a confident and humorous speaker with rich voice & good body language.

Second occasion (21st of August)
I was a contestant in my home club, The Frontier TMC humorous speech contest. Due to 1st occasion and 2nd occasion was only one day different, I couldn’t do any change to my speech. I only added some body movement to enhance the humorous punch line. Because of the positive comments that I got during the first occasion and I practised the speech using the method of visualization before going to bed one day before the contest, I was very confident during the contest. I got champion in my club contest.

Third occasion (27th of August)
I was participating in Bradell Heights Advanced TMC mock contest. After my club contest, I stopped practising my speech for a few days and started to think about to add in speech value and make some minor changes of the speech. I’ve added in a simple dance move at the beginning. This group of audience looked a bit serious to me, I expected they would laugh after my dance move, however, it seemed like nobody was laughing. I felt very demoralized. Throughout the speech, there was not much laughter compared to my first and second occasion. I have to admit that in this occasion I didn’t perform well. I could feel that my body movement was not so natural. I think it’s because of the opening… I didn’t start with a good opening and it affected my emotion during the presentation. I was ranked 3rd out of 3 mock contest participants.

Forth occasion (1st of September)
I was a contestant in Bradell Heights Advanced TMC humorous speech contest. Since the third occasion, I always thought of what to do for my speech in order to create more laughter points. I browsed through the internet about humour, I went to other club speech contests to get some ideas… Still, it’s the SURPRISE that make much contribution to the laughter. Another one would be the current issues that relate to the audience. Only two days before the contest, I decided to change almost 60% of my speech. The ideas just came to my mind while I was working. I wanted to create the BIGGEST surprise at the beginning by tricking the contest chair and audience. First, I started by pretending that I wanted them to stop the contest for a while because I wanted to request something from the Contest Chair. Then I asked Contest Chair whether I could borrow money from her. From there, I linked to the common scene we experienced when we approached our friends to borrow money. I felt that they were not surprised at all. There was no laughter at all, only smiling & confused faces. Then I proceeded on, what the heck! I forgot my scripts, which I didn’t expect it would happen. I practised a few times again before the contest, and I could remember my scripts. What’d happened actually? I really didn’t know. Then, I pretended that I acted to forget my script by taking out the notes confidently. Throughout this whole session, I could see somebody smiling, somebody wanted to laugh but didn’t dare to laugh, somebody just shaking their heads….. This is the worst experience that I have never encountered.

After the contest, I went to ask around how’s my speech. Of course, I knew it’s very bad performed, but still I wanted to know how bad it was. First person I approached was Suchi, the VPE of my club. She said I looked very nervous compared to the contest in The Frontier TMC. Also, she said the speech that I presented in my home club was far more better that this modified version. Then, I thought, I shouldn’t change my script. Very immediately, I changed my mind, I thought it was really a good experience for me to know my limitation and what doesn’t work. The next ones I approached were the contest chair and some of the BHA TMC Toastmasters, I asked whether they were surprised with the opening. They commented that they were very confused throughout the session, they didn’t know whether I was real or acted it out. One guy pointed that, if the audience is confused, they won’t dare to laugh. This point, I totally agree with him.

In this occasion, I’ve learnt three valuable tips:
1) Don’t do last minute major change of the scripts. This will reduce the speaker’s confidence level.
2) To create surprise is good, but don’t try to confuse the audience in order to get the surprise.
3) The confidence level of the start will affect the performance of the rest of the speech.

Then I think, if I didn’t change my scripts for the 4th occasion, I wouldn’t have learnt these tips. So, I HAD MADE A RIGHT CHOICE!

This week, I will be concentrating in finalizing my speech scripts for the preparation of Area Z2 humorous speech contest which will be held on 22nd September 2007. Stay TUNE! Participating in competition is really a FUN process. It’s not about winning; it’s about a valuable learning process.

p/s: I will upload all my audio recordings for these 4 occasions after my Area contest.