How to Write a Toast Speech

Goal: The primary goal of this assignment is for you to demonstrate basic public speaking fundamentals, most importantly, delivery techniques. Secondary goals include learning about your course mates, and sharing a bit about a significant person in your life.

Your Task: You will identify a noteworthy person—one worthy of a toast—and create a 2 minute speech about them. Imagine the person you choose is going to receive an award and you will give a speech about that person during the ceremony. Or, imagine you are giving a toast to a friend on their wedding day. What would you say? You will deliver your speech at the front of the class and it may be video-recorded for use in class at a later date.

The person you choose can be someone you know personally or not. If the person is not generally known, your speech should help us learn who that person is. You should endeavor to tell us three important things about this person—three reasons why they are worthy of a toast—three accomplishments, three qualities, etc.

One of your main goals in this speech is to present the speech while demonstrating proper delivery techniques, specifically relating to eye contact, vocal control, and body language. While organization and clarity are important, we aren’t grading for that in this speech.

For this speech, you must do some prep work. To demonstrate that you have prepared in advance, you must create an outline using the template provided. You will hand this in the day of your speech after you have finished.

You will be asked to commit to a topic/person 4 days prior to the first day of speeches. Once you commit, you will not be allowed to change. Doing so will cost you 5 points.

Dates and points: This speech assignment (speaking and the written materials you submit) is worth 50 points toward your final grade. All speeches will be delivered on February 17th & 19th, in an order determined by the instructor.

Grading: The rubric for grading this assignment...