Speech

Instructions

1-5 Evaluation and Feedback - 2

This project addresses the skills needed to give and receive feedback. You will learn about giving, receiving and applying feedback.

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to present a speech on any topic, receive feedback, and apply the feedback to a second speech.

Overview: Choose any topic for your first 5- to 7-minute speech. After your speech, carefully review your feedback. At a different club meeting, present a 5- to 7-minute speech in which you incorporate feedback from your first speech. You may choose to present the same speech again or a new speech. Your second speech should reflect some or all of the feedback from your first speech. Finally, after you have completed both speeches, serve as an evaluator at a club meeting and deliver constructive feedback about another member’s presentation.

Competencies:

• Deliver tactful and constructive feedback.

• Use positive language when delivering feedback.

• Understand the need to be open to receiving feedback.

• Implement feedback in future projects.

• Show respect by staying engaged with the speaker’s presentation.

• Accept feedback from evaluators.

• Acknowledge the importance of being open-minded.

Speech timings: 5:00, 6:00, 7:00

Script

Mother in law…How does THAT make you feel? And if I told you I moved to Berlin to come and live with my mother in law, just the two of us? How comfortable is this getting? First, though, I must admit she isn’t actually my mother in law, I’m a bit young for that. She’s just my girlfriend’s mother. However, I’m pretty confident in our future, and so I will call her my mother in law to make it easier. I might look a bit stupid in a few years, but I’ll just change Toastmasters club if that happens.

So I moved to Berlin not because I desperately wanted to live with and spend Christmas with her, but because I found a really interesting job here. And my girlfriend is German, so I felt like it was a perfect opportunity to combine both work and hobby.

If you want to picture my mother in law, think of Monica from Friends, black haired, quite short, but she’s just a little bit older, and tired from having had kids, but still just as commanding. Living with her is tough. And not for the reasons you might expect. It’s not tough because I’m scared of her or she doesn’t approve of me. It’s tough because it requires an enormous amount of willpower to not contradict her. You see, my mother in law is German-Turkish, and she is proud, VERY proud of being Turkish. If you listened only to her, you’d think that the Ottoman Empire was still ruling the world. You could say she is nostalgic about those times. The highest-quality furniture, the most-renowned tailors and the bestcarpets come from Turkey! The Ottomans invented tea, coffee and even cheese! Cheese! She told that to a Swiss!

Recently, the most sensationalist claim was that Santa Claus was a Turk. Forget about St Nicholas, pagan traditions or American marketing, no: his name was Ayaz Ata, Father Frost and he was from Central Asia. He was the father of all Father Christmases! Naturally, I wasn’t convinced by this origin story, but I knew better and kept my mouth shut.

This illustrates very well my relationship with her, it’s like walking on eggshells. Every interaction is a fine balancing act. How can I impress her? What should I tell her when I come home late on Tuesday evenings? Can I ask where Baklava is really from? This takes overthinking to a whole new level, I tell you!

But it’s definitely not all bad. She is a lovely person, with a kind heart, that has made my integration in Berlin so much smoother. She’s the one who suggested I move into her spare room and helps me with my German paperwork.

She did take time to warm up to me though. I was the first boyfriend her daughter brought back, so you can imagine, she didn’t really know how to act with me. The first few weeks were quite awkward. But slowly, as I ate Ottoman cheese and agreed to Turk Father Christmas, she loosened up. Now she says I’m the son she’s never had, which I am very touched by.

What I find specifically entertaining and sometimes scary is when I look at my parents in law’s relationship. Why? Because I’m getting a glimpse of what my future might look like, it’s like legally time travelling. My mother in law, and coincidently, her daughter, have, let’s say, dictatorial traits. A bit like a certain modern Turkish politician. As a result, the father gave up a long time ago, he lets the wife run the house. He’s one of the smarter ones it seems and he must have agreed to Turk Father Christmas too. And funnily enough, that reminds me very strongly of my father, he would always say with a huge smile: ‘happy wife happy life’. To which my mom would answer by rolling her eyes and telling him to shut the hell up.

On the whole, she is still more of Ataturk than Erdogan. And she wasn’t that far from the truth with Santa Claus, there are some origin stories that do trace him back to modern day Turkey. So he was actually even Turkish, not just Turk! It wasn’t Central Asia, and it wasn’t exactly Father Frost, she just got some of the details wrong. But didn’t Lenin say: “a lie told often enough becomes the truth“?

In the end we do get along well. And the reason why I do try so hard to please my (hopefully) future mother in law is because I really love her daughter. So I will go to great lengths to keep my girlfriend, even if that means eating Ottoman cheese and worshipping Turk Father Christmas.