Evaluation Prompts for Second Language Speakers

The web-based evaluations provided as part of the WordPress for Toastmasters system now include four additional prompts for those giving speeches in a language that’s not their native language. These prompts can be made to appear after the standard prompts based on those from the Pathways forms for each project.

The additional prompts in this “beta” release of the feature are:

Pace: not too fast or too slow
Grammar and word usage
Word tense, gender, and pronouns
Clear pronunciation

Adding these prompts was a feature request from Deborah Pinnock, who recently finished her term as president of Club Awesome Toastmasters in Coral Springs, Florida, which has many English as a second language speakers among its members. Often, one of the reasons they have joined Toastmasters is to get practice with their business English, and these optional prompts are a way of providing them with feedback on a more systematic basis.

Club Awesome was the original WordPress for Toastmasters website, so we’re testing this new feature there but welcome input from elsewhere.

Members can set a preference on their member profile to have these additional prompts displayed on the form by default.

If this member preference has not been set, the evaluator can still access these options by checking a “Show second language speaker prompts” checkbox.

The original impetus for creating the online evaluation forms system was to simplify the process of giving evaluations long distance — in an online or hybrid meeting — without the need to email PDFs back and forth. Now it potentially provides a way of giving better feedback to users with specific needs. Although this feature was added with English as a Second Language speakers in mind, it could potentially be put to other uses by multilingual clubs. The web-based forms are only available in English so far but it’s possible they could be translated.

This feature is still a work in progress, so suggestions on how to make it better are welcome. Write to david@wp4toastmasters.com.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay