I’ve heard smart people speak well of Toastmasters.
I’ve mostly heard them damn it with faint praises, as being great for polishing presentation skills, but not being particularly useful for anything else.
Interestingly enough, of people I know who are actually professional speakers (in the sense of being paid to talk, either at their own events or other peoples’), exactly none of them recommend it. (Even amongst ones who do not sell any sort of speaker training of their own.)
OTOH, I have heard a couple of shout-outs for the Carnegie speaking course, but again, this is all just in the context of speaking… which has little relationship to general social skills AFAICT.
“Jives” means “is talking nonsense” or (archaic) “dances”.
{Tries looking it up} Wikipedia says “jives” can be a term for African American Vernacular English. The Urban Dictionary gives it a bunch of definitions, including both of mine, “jibe”, and forms of African American speech which include a lot of slang, but not any sort of African American speech in general.
On the other hand, the language may have moved on—I keep seeing that mistake (the Urban Dictionary implies it isn’t a mistake), and maybe I should give up.
I still retain a fondness for people who get it right.
I’ve mostly heard them damn it with faint praises, as being great for polishing presentation skills, but not being particularly useful for anything else.
Interestingly enough, of people I know who are actually professional speakers (in the sense of being paid to talk, either at their own events or other peoples’), exactly none of them recommend it. (Even amongst ones who do not sell any sort of speaker training of their own.)
OTOH, I have heard a couple of shout-outs for the Carnegie speaking course, but again, this is all just in the context of speaking… which has little relationship to general social skills AFAICT.
Interesting, that jibes* pretty well with my impressions of Toastmasters.
There are other Carnegie courses than the speaking one. This is the one I was thinking of.
*See comment below for the distinction between “jives” and “jibes”. It ain’t cool beein’ no jive turkey!
Nitpick: “jibes” means “is consistent with”.
“Jives” means “is talking nonsense” or (archaic) “dances”.
{Tries looking it up} Wikipedia says “jives” can be a term for African American Vernacular English. The Urban Dictionary gives it a bunch of definitions, including both of mine, “jibe”, and forms of African American speech which include a lot of slang, but not any sort of African American speech in general.
On the other hand, the language may have moved on—I keep seeing that mistake (the Urban Dictionary implies it isn’t a mistake), and maybe I should give up.
I still retain a fondness for people who get it right.
haha… thanks!