During our recent speech evaluation workshop, our Trainer Linda White shared a number of tips and tricks to improve our speech evaluations. While speech evaluation is more of an art than a science according to her. Some general guidelines should nevertheless be followed for delivering effective evaluations:
- Evaluate to encourage and motivate.
- Evaluate the speech and how it was delivered. You should not evaluate the content!
- Give specific feedback and back it up with examples.
- Evaluate the speech. Don’t retell it!
- Evaluate the speech. Don’t tell your own story!
- Watch how you say it. Use positive and encouraging language.
- Use the commend, recommend, commend structure. Aka the “evaluation sandwich”.
- Speak for the benefit of the whole audience. Use third person when doing evaluations!
- Refer to the speech objectives in the manual. Plus any personal objectives the speaker may have!
- Balance the evaluation depending on the level and experience of the speaker.
- Prepare your evaluations in advance. Read the speech objectives!
- End with a summary.
- Writing notes is often a challenge for speech evaluator.
The general advice is to write as much as you can and to select anything relevant later for when you’ll deliver the evaluation. Speech evaluators might find it beneficial to use a “saw, heard, felt” grid or a simpler grid divided into commendations and recommendations.Onwards with your evaluations!