On May 18, 2024 I gave a 20-minute workshop presentation at the 2024 District 15 Conference in Twin Falls, titled Creating or Finding Great Table Topics Questions. This blog post is a handout about it which provides the references from that presentation.
Table Topics is the impromptu speaking part of a Toastmasters club meeting. Before the meeting the Table Topics Master makes up (creates or finds) a series of questions related to the theme. At the meeting he or she asks members who do not have a role to answer them. Then they give a one-to-two-minute off-the-cuff speech.
Some of you in Division A may have heard of another question source. If you have small children, then you may get asked: “Daddy, where do Table Topics Questions come from?” An answer is that the Table Topics Bunny brings them. On February 24, 2018 I blogged about Were you recently visited by the Table Topics Bunny?
What makes a question great? A great table topics question is open; it is neither wide-open nor closed. On May 11, 2021 I blogged about how A good Table Topics question is not closed, and it is open-ended rather than wide open. Earlier, on October 5, 2020, I had blogged about Tips for creating good Table Topics questions.
A closed question has too brief of an answer. It might be a single word or a number. For example, we could ask this comically awful question:
Would you rather be attacked by bears or crocodiles?
Conversely, a wide-open question is too general for most people and requires way more than a two-minute answer. For example, we also could ask:
What is the meaning of life?
But that question might work with experienced speakers in an Area, Division or District Table Topics Contest.
An open question is like a small container which can easily be filled in just two minutes. For example, we could ask:
What are the worst street names you ever saw?
The very worst name is Poison Creek Road. One is in Marsing, Idaho and another is in Hanksville, Utah. In Idaho there also is a Poison Creek Picnic Site, on Mud Flat Road. But the words poison and picnic don’t belong anywhere near each other.
Another great question is:
Tell us a story about something that’s in your wallet, pocket, purse, or backpack.
On May 6, 2010 I blogged about What stories are you carrying in your pocket?
Another great question is:
What do we call the residents of that town?
On August 16, 2023 I blogged about More about demonyms for cities – in Idaho and elsewhere. When I asked it, I found it didn’t work without posting a list of possible suffixes. The best demonym is Caldwellers for residents of Caldwell, Idaho. For Twin Falls, Twin Fallers doesn’t work for everyone, just those who jump off of the Perrine Bridge in pairs. And in Horseshoe Bend, only blacksmiths can be called Horseshoe Benders.
At Bad Grammarian on February 22, 2024 there is an article titled Table Topics Questions Guide. It has the following themes:
Seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
Holidays: New Year’s, Valentine’s, Mother’s, Father’s, Halloween, Christmas
Events: Birthday, Graduation, Wedding, Anniversary
Interests and Hobbies: Pets, Travel, Food, Gardening, Movies, Television
We also can use approaches: Smallest or Biggest, Oldest or Youngest, Worst or Best.
There is an 18-page pdf article from 2017 compiled by Mark Lavergne with 101 Ideas for Great Table Topics. You can find it here.
If you lack imagination, then you just might Google the phrase “Table Topics Questions.” At District 8 Toastmasters you can find an eight-page pdf file from 2017 with 365 Sample Table Topics Questions.
But there are other phrases which work well for finding great questions. They include: Impromptu Speech Topics, Icebreaker Questions, Job Interview Questions, Conversation Starters, Story Prompts, and Writing Prompts.
On May 12, 2014 I blogged about 200 Impromptu Speech Topics (actually three sets of them).
A second phrase is Icebreaker Questions.At ConversationStartersWorld there is an article titled 200 Icebreaker Questions. There is another by Clare Lew at TeamStrength titled The 25 Best Icebreaker Questions for Team-Building at Work. Back on January 27, 2018 I blogged about 25 questions for Table Topics from Clare Lew.
There is a very interesting set of questions which I blogged about on February 12, 2018 in a post titled Falling in love and Table Topics questions.Reader's Digest published them on March 13, 2024 in an article titled The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.
A third phrase which works well for finding great questions is Job Interview Questions. On December 8, 2022 I blogged about how Job interview questions about soft skills also can be used for Table Topics questions at Toastmasters club meetings.
A fourth phrase which works well for finding great questions is Conversation Starters. On November 21, 2022 I blogged about how Conversation Starters can also be used for Table Topics questions.
A fifth phrase which works well for finding great questions is Story Prompts. On October 24, 2022 I blogged about Less than obvious sources of Table Topics questions for Toastmasters club meetings. In that post I mentioned 15 story starters in a 2022 book by Steven James and Tom Morrisey titled The Art of the Tale (and subtitled Engage your audience, elevate your organization, and share your message through storytelling). And on May 27, 2022 I blogged about Sixteen ideas for Table Topics speeches from The Moth.
A sixth phrase which works well for finding great questions is Writing Prompts. On November 12, 2022 I blogged about how Writing prompts also can be used for Table Topics questions. A prompt provides a starting point for a writer who is stuck. So, where can you find good collections of writing prompts? Here are two possibilities.There is a Learning Network article at the New York Times which was updated on August 2, 2023. It is titled 525 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing. There are 37 categories. When you click on a prompt, you are taken to a brief Learning Network article. So the article also is a huge bank of ideas for prepared speeches! And every year there are 365 in twelve monthly pdf articles with writing prompts from Lakeshore Learning.
In summary, you can find thousands of Table Topics questions to use. You don’t have to make them up from scratch!
The cartoon of magician Zan Zig was adapted from this image at Wikimedia Commons, as was this image of a magnifying glass.
UPDATE: May 20, 2024
Woodrow Wilson reportedly once said that:
“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”
For the Table Topics Contest, Meg White printed out a page from the web article I referenced about 365 Sample Table Topics Questions, and Greg Alvord picked out a wide-open #217 to ask the contestants:
“What worries you about the future?”
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