What are the "functionary" roles for and what do they do? What skills do they seek to develop? Toastmaster: The meeting emcee. Introduce other functionaries and speakers. This role teaches us how to effectively run a meeting and how to communicate effectively in advance. Speaker: Prepare, rehearse, and present a speech based on Pathways projects. Pathways is a new Toastmasters education program that enables Toastmasters to further personalize their learning experience within our organization. For more information on Pathways, please click here. This aspect of Toastmasters is why most people join Toastmasters. Elective Pathways projects helps to further individualize this training process for personal and/or professional development. A skill that is often overlooked but is essential is that of being able to receive feedback - both positive and critical and the role of speaker definitely promotes a healthy development of this skill. Evaluator: Provide feedback to speakers, including comments on how well they met speech project objectives and offer opinions on how the speech could be improved. To become an excellent speaker, it is wise to strive to become an excellent evaluator. This role combines listening skills, time management skills, critical thinking skills, speech writing skills, presentation skills both prepared and impromptu, and much more. Wordmaster: Offer a vocabulary word for meeting participants to learn and incorporate into their speeches (whether formal or impromptu) during the meeting. This role helps us to increase our vocabulary. Grammarian: Comment on excellent uses of the English language and offer suggestions for improvement. This role helps us to improve our English and grammar to make a better impression on our listeners. Ah-Counter: Track meeting participants' use of pause fillers or verbal crutches (such as ah, um, uh, er, you know, and excessive use of connectors like and, but, and so). This role helps improve our fluency and to help us sound more professional and credible. It is a [sometimes frustrating] process but one that is extremely effective. Timer: Time speeches, table topics responses, and evaluations and provide visual signals when timing objectives have been met and/or exceeded. This role helps us develop time management skills. Table Topic Master: Prepare questions based on a meeting theme and ask members at random to help with impromptu speaking skills. Very little of our daily communication is scripted so the impromptu speaking skill is essential to develop for interviews, social situations, every time you answer the phone, and unexpected business meeting reports. General Evaluator: Facilitate feedback portion of meeting and provide feedback on the meeting overall. This role helps us practice facilitation skills, providing effective feedback, and meeting quality. Jokemaster: Prepare a joke to share with the club. This role adds levity to our meetings and helps us learn to incorporate humor. Word of Wisdom: Share a quote or two that imparts wisdom to the club. This role is just what it sounds like - we simply want to impart some wisdom before we adjourn for the night.