Angela Lansbury Speeches and Making Speeches

Singapore
Saturday evening at SCTA in the Hindu temple, 2018, May 12, evening before Mother's Day.

Best table topic speaker.
Subject Spare the rod
(Quotation from Pearl Buck, American prize-winning author who wrote: The Good Earth; and Peony.)

Spare the rod and spoil the child is thought to come from the bible, but it's hard to find the exact saying in the bible, rather a longer verse which has been summarized in this way.

Nowadays, in the UK, and some other countries, a mother is not legally allowed to use corporal punishment and nor are schools.
Instead, you have to use other methods of instructing, reminding and controlling children. This was demonstrated on TV by a Supernanny. She had a naughty step and lists of actions which would win gold stars, which would cumulate to win a prize such as an outing. You can give pocket money or stars for tasks, or allocate them on a rota. In Japan, the schoolchildren cook and serve lunch, clean up the kitchen, classrooms and common areas and this increases a feeling of responsibility. In think rewards are better than rods - this is how a modern mother wins love and respect and helps her children achieve.

Evaluation
I also won the ribbon for best evaluator. I evaluated an excellent storytelling speech. The speaker had an important message, how a mother can be a good mother to her own child and other children, with or without the help of a husband.
I commended the way she gave a very visual speech, painting pictures of herself, a small Indian girl, walking hand-in-hand with her new classmate and friend, a Chinese boy.

A second picture was how his mother waved and smiled at both children.

The third picture was how the boy's mother gave a gift of a food box to the girl on the boy's mother's birthday.

Finally, the visual picture of the boy's mother celebrating not one but many occasions with the other family's children.

My suggestions for improvement:
Make the title clearer: bonding is the key - a great metaphor, a key is for a door, what kind of a door.
Start with the message or summary of the speech, so we know where it is going and what to remember and look out for.

 End with the message, an emphatic sentence, and emphatic word. End with a call to action - should we copy that mother, how, by doing what?

Author and speaker
Angela Lansbury ALB ACG

I was seriously funny introducing the word oxymoron to a group of trainee speakers at a Teamsters International club in Singapore. I was asked to be Language Evaluator at a club in Singapore. Language Evaluator in the UK would be called Grammarian.

I chose as word of the day, oxymoron. I wrote it on the white board whilst waiting for permission to start.  I looked around for something solid to use as a ruler to keep my writing straight. I found a plastic A shape for displaying the word Language Evaluator was solid and straight.

The word oxymoron is a combination of the word O x y, meaning sharp, and moron, dull or stupid. An oxymoron looks like two terms which contradict each other but creates a new idea. Here are some examples:

o x y - sharp or point (spellchecker wants to change this to oxo)
Moron - from moros stupid
oxymoron
seriously funny
act naturally
jumbo shrimp
living dead
hell's angels
deafening silence
Microsoft works
open secret
plastic glasses
sleeping policeman
Military intelligence
only choice
working holiday
genuine imitation
v i r t u a l reality (spell checker wants to turn this into visual)

minor crisis
howling silence (book title by Catherine Lim)

The audience came up with more:
pretty ugly
Cold war
true lies

You can make up a sentence incorporating several:

It was an open secret that plastic glasses gave us only one choice, to call in military intelligence and offer them a working holiday.

More samples of useful information from
grammar.about.com

I have used the word Oxymoron at least three times in Singapore.

Monday April 18 2016 in Singapore at Brilliant Advanced.  In advance I suggested to the person who invited me to the club that we should ask everybody in the room to use the word in a sentence so they had the confidence to pronounce an unfamiliar word and got practise at least once, which might help them remember it later as they had heard it used about 20 times by the different members of the audience at the start.

So I was asked to introduce the meeting with word of the day and the introductions of members and guests.

I should have written on the whiteboard:
1 Give your name - loudly, clearly, slowly - spell if it's difficult, repeat your name
2 Your Toastmasters Club name / Guest/ where you found this club details
3 Use the word of the day.

Angela Lansbury, author, speech coach, speaker.