"What can Toastmaster Club do for you?" I couldn’t believe that I chose such a boring topic when I first thought about it! Bichu ask me what I did in my spare time. I thought and thought, finally realized that I spend most of my free time on the Toastmasters. And then I ask myself "Why?". I could have come up with a top 10 ten list, or even top 20 list of these benefits. But I decided to share with you some small things that have happened to me, and possibly will happen to you, in which being a club member has helped me.

The Toastmasters membership has helped me with my written skills, which is needed sometimes at work.

For example, one day, for the first time, I was asked to write a user manual document, for a project that I was working on. I did, and turned it in to my boss. My boss probably didn’t know that my written English could be a problem. So he sent the document out to our client without checking. Then you know what happened next. He came to my office later, obviously not so happy, and said: "I can not understand it." That was one of the most embarrassing moments that I don’t want it to happen ever again. The mistakes in the document didn’t represent me, but the company! So, to improve the written skills, every time when I was preparing for a speech, I wrote down my thought first. And then, I will try to find a friend who is a native English speaker to correct it for me. I was so surprised by the number of changes that I have to make. It is just not a easy thing to complete a sentence without a grammatical error, or to deliver a message in a right context. After times of practicing, I have gotten better. Last time, I wrote a long email to out client, and my coworker didn’t find anything wrong. I was a little proud, and told my boss: "Hi, I wrote an email without mistake!" He said: "Judy, you wrote an email without A mistake." See how easily that we can be caught?

Once the speech is written down, I’ll try to memorize it and practice on how to deliver it. Memorizing a speech is my way of improving English. The most useful speech turned out to be the ice breaker speech.

Whenever I met a new friend, the conversation always started with: "What’s your name? How long have you been here? Which school are you going to? What do you think about Chinese food?…. I can find the answers for questions like that in my icebreaker speech. I can talk about it without think, and the grammar is guaranteed to be correct. Amazingly, your speech may help with your career. This just happened to me two weeks ago. After passed technical interviews with some technical experts, I went to an interview with the owner of a company, where, I was supposed to impress him with my personality. After some chatting, he said: "I have a question for you, I ask this question to every person that comes to the interview. Tell me an example of your goals that has been accomplished." "That is a easy question." I told him. Then I started talking about why I had always been interested in programming, why I didn’t study computer science when I went to college and how I transferred to the computer science department and how I finally found a job that I enjoy doing. If you still cannot imagine what exactly what I said, I’ll give you a hint - The paragraph number 3 in my icebreaker speech just answers that! I even tried to use some eye contact, even though I found that it wasn’t too easy under that circumstance. Was he impressed? Yes. Did I get an offer? I did. I’ll start my new job on September 1. Bingo!

I also believe that benefits of Toastmasters membership goes beyond public speaking and extends to every facet of communication between people. As a matter of fact, being a toastmaster helped me to develop a friendlier attitude towards the others. That makes me a positive person. I had some experiences that when I needed help, people turned their backs to me. Therefor, for a while, I thought are not as friendly as I thought. That was absolutely wrong as I realized later on. When I came to the toastmasters club, I looked around the room, I saw eager, supportive, giving faces of our fellow members. Toastermaster members have made a commitment to be supportive. This means more than just being a good listener and offering constructive criticism in meetings; It also means that they try to make every one of our daily encounters a positive and meaningful experience. I learned in the Toastmater club to break down the walls between ourselves and others, and build bridges of understanding.