Evaluators provide live feedback to the speakers on the speeches they have just given. Feedback is one of the most important aspects of Toastmaster as it is how members learn and improve their skills.
Key Skills: Listening, Critical Thinking, Effective Feedback
- Speak to the person you are evaluating in advance and see of there is anything they specifically want you to look out for (over and above the project aims).
- Remember to prove both commendations and recommendations in your evaluations. Commendations are important to reinforce what the speaker is already good at. Recommendations provide helpful guidance on how they can improve for the next time.
- Do not address your evaluation to the speaker in the second person (you did this; you could have tried this), but include the whole audience by speaking in the third person (John did x well; what I liked about John’s speech was y, because…).
- You only have 2-3 minutes so do not have time to recap the whole speech. Be selective with what points are most important to highlight.
- An evaluation is a speech, so make sure you have a structure, including introduction and summary/conclusion (this is important for evaluation competitions).