	Phoenix Toronto Toastmasters "Catch the Phoenix Spirit!" A Tuesday night Toastmaster club in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada.
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Thank you for your Mentorship feedback and suggestions!
-- Sandy

Speech Contest Judging

Judging a speech is similar to Speech Evaluation. You will use the same obvervational and analytical skills to observation the good and bad points of a speech. The main difference is that with judging you are not giving feedback to the speakers. Instead you are comparing the speakers and ranking them in order from best to worst.

Remember that you are only judging their performance RIGHT NOW. Do not be biased by past performance. Your job is to fairly compare the speakers on a variety of criteria. Once you have scored each criteria add up the total score for each speaker, compare the total scores, and then rank them. First, Second, Third, etc.

Contest Judging Forms

You can find a link to various contest judging forms here. Different contests have different judging criteria and forms. For example, there are different forms for Table Topics, Evaluation, Humourous, and International speech contests. Take your time to get familar with the forms and the judging criteria.

As a judge will have one minute after the speaker finishes to score their speech. Judging takes practice. Try to avoid going back and revising a previous score unless you've clearly made a mistake. Go with your first instinct and keep your original score. This will help you judge each speech on it's own merits.

Practice Excercise

At our mentorship meeting we had Brian and James give a two minute speech. The rest of the audience scored the two speeches using the Judging forms. After all speakers had finished the scores were tallied up. The speakers scores were then ranked (1, 2, 3). On the bottom of the judging form each judge put their choices in the prescribed order. Don't forget to sign your judging form to make it official!

Now each individual judges vote was tallied together by the Chief judge. After the votes were tallied it turned out that Brian had won. Had this been a real contest then at the end of the contest these results would have been given out. And that would have been the end of it, we wouldn't have given any other feedback to the contestants.

However, since this was an excercise and not a real contest we openly reviewed the ballots. We then went through each judging category one by one. Members got to comment on how they thought a speaker did better or worse than their opponent in a particular judging criteria.

There was some disagreement in one or two individual categories where the contestants scored closely. Interestingly everyone agreed that the speaker they "felt" was the overal best also turned out to be the winner. This was true not only on their personal ballot, but on the overal score.

Instinctively we all can tell when we hear a good speech. Many members commented that the excercise helped them better appreciate judging.

Follow Up Practice Excercise

Bring a few copies of the speech judging forms to the next meeting. In the prepared speaking portion of the meeting pretend that you are a contest judge. As you watch the speeches judge each speech contest style. Remember, with a bit of practice you can learn to judge like a pro.

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