Toasmasters Meeting Guide: Language Evaluator

This special role is a true challenge to your listening abilities. As language evaluator, also called grammarian, you have two roles: to introduce new words to members and to comment on the use of English during the course of the meeting.

Here are some reminders to do a good job.
Before the meeting:
- Prepare your visual aid for the Word of the Day. You may post it somewhere visible.
- Find somebody who can evaluate you using your Leadership Manual.

During the meeting:
- When introduced prior to the introductions or table topics, announce the Word of the Day, state its part of speech, define it, and use it in a sentence. (Avoid obscure words. Select words that will be usable and will help build the members’ vocabulary.) Ask that anyone speaking during any part of the program use the Word of the Day.
- Pay attention to all speeches and evaluations and use the form in this kit to list down:
a. Germs- grammar lapses
b. Gems - creative words and phrases in gems.
-Take note of speakers who used the Word of the Day correctly.
- When called to present the language evaluation, explain your role briefly and give your report. Offer the correct usage when you enumerate the germs.

After the meeting:
- Submit this kit to the Sergeant at Arms
- Ask for your Leadership Manual. Discuss your evaluation if anything is unclear.

Checklist:
- Grammar Guide/ Book (optional)
- Pen
- Your Leadership Manual
-Language Evaluation Report

The Grammarian’s Glossary

Cliché - A trite or overused expression or idea, e.g.: "without further ado." However, I never met a cliché I couldn't like in a fresh or humorous context.

Dialect - A regional variety of language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists.

Figure of Speech - An expression, such as metaphor or hyperbole, in which a non-literal and intensive sense of a word or words is used to create a forceful, dramatic or illuminating image.

Grammar - The study of a language as a systematically composed body of words that exhibit discernible regularity of structure and arrangement into sentences. It sometimes includes such aspects of language as the pronunciation of words, the meanings of words and the history of words.

Idiom - A speech form or expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or that cannot be understood from the individual meaning of the elements, e.g., "put up with," "ill at ease," "how about." Also: A specialized vocabulary used by a group of people.

Informal - More appropriate for use in the spoken language than in the written language especially of business, technical or official communication.

Jargon - The specialized or technical language of trade, profession or similar group.

Nonstandard - Of, pertaining to, or indicating a level of language usage that is usually avoided by educated speakers and writers.

Slang - The nonstandard vocabulary of a given culture or subculture, consisting typically of arbitrary and often ephemeral coinages. Examples are: honcho, cool. Note: A term may receive contradictory labels of "slang" and "colloquialism" (informal speech).

Standard - Conforming to established educated usage in speech or writing.

Usage - The actual or expressed way in which a language or its elements are used, interrelated, or pronounced.