An Inspirational Speech, Annotated
A complete student speech with eight techniques highlighted. Useful preparation for the Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival public speaking classes, school speech competitions, or the speaking section of the HKDSE English paper.
A worked example beats a pile of advice
Telling a child to "use a strong opening" leaves them where they were. Showing them a strong opening, in a finished speech, with the technique named, is what changes how the next draft sounds.
The speech below was written for a HK student preparing for a public speaking event. It is short enough to deliver in three minutes, structured around a single clear message, and uses the techniques HK Speech Festival adjudicators reward. Read it aloud once before reading the annotations. The voice in your head is the same voice your child will use when they perform their own.
The Look Up Challenge
An inspirational speech on phone obsession and missed opportunities, suitable for late primary or junior secondary delivery.
"The Look Up Challenge"
Imagine this. You are on the way to meet your friend for a movie. You reach into your pocket for your phone to message her.
"Imagine this" is a classic opening. Two words and the audience is already inside the scene. The everyday situation that follows (meeting a friend, reaching for the phone) makes the topic relatable for almost any listener.
Shock and horror hits you as it dawns on you that your phone is in your bedroom, plugged into the charger. You feel like you have lost a limb. Like you have been cut off from the world.
"Shock and horror" amplifies the emotion. The "you" voice keeps the listener inside the scene rather than watching from outside. Second-person narrative is one of the most underused tools in student speeches.
But is this really the case?
One short question breaks the rhythm of the prose and forces the audience to think. It also signals that the next sentence will reframe everything they have heard so far.
This brings me to my topic today. Techno-obsession and missed opportunities.
The audience now knows exactly where the speech is heading. Confident, direct, no waffle. Many student speeches fail because they bury the topic three minutes in. This one names it before the audience has to ask.
Smart devices are ruling our lives nowadays, but at what cost? Are we losing touch with the real world? We spend so much time looking down that we do not look up, and we miss what is going on around us.
Two rhetorical questions promise answers later in the speech, hooking the audience to keep listening. The pair of opposing images, looking down versus looking up, gives the speech a visual contrast that the audience holds in mind for the rest of the talk. Strong speeches almost always carry one central image like this.
There is an online poem called "Look Up" by Gary Turk that went viral on YouTube. The main character was so busy tapping on his phone that he missed the woman who was supposed to be the love of his life, changing his whole destiny.
Linking the speech to a known piece of pop culture borrows that piece's emotional weight. The audience already feels something about the Gary Turk poem, and the speaker has now lent that feeling to her own argument. Choose references the audience knows or pictures quickly.
I had a similar experience when I went to my local sports ground for training. I was so engrossed in texting that I did not bother to look at the notice board. The next day, my teammates asked whether I was going to the meet-and-greet session with our visiting athlete. I looked at them with a completely blank face. I had no clue what they were talking about. "Did you not see the poster? The deadline for signing up was yesterday." My heart sank. Texting cost me the chance to meet a hero. It was a real wake-up call.
A first-person story is the strongest evidence in a short speech. By this point the speaker has used three kinds of narrative: an imagined "you" scene, a popular cultural reference, and now a real memory. That variety keeps the audience listening, and the personal element earns trust the abstract opening alone would not.
How many of you sitting out there are missing opportunities because of your obsession with your smart device? Going back to my opening, if you feel like you have lost a limb when you forget your phone, your answer has to be yes. But next time it happens, see it as a blessing, not the end of the world. Let me leave you with this. I want to challenge you to look up instead of looking down, and see what you have been missing. Maybe a beautiful sunset. Maybe a smile from a stranger. Maybe the person who changes your whole life.
Three closing tools work together. The callback returns to the opening "lost a limb" image and ties the speech into a circle. The heavy repetition of "you" keeps the audience personally involved. The clear challenge gives the audience something to do next, and the final image leaves them with a picture rather than a statement. Speech Festival adjudicators reward this kind of structured ending.
"A strong speech is not a wall of words. It is a series of small choices, each one named and rehearsed."
Want the structure your child needs to write their own speech this term?
See How to Write Speeches →Eight techniques worth stealing
Read the speech once for sound, once for technique. Then ask your child which of these eight they recognise from a school speech they have heard recently. Naming the technique is the first step to using it.
The eight techniques in order
- The Hook. Two-word openers ("Imagine this") that drop the audience into the scene before they have settled.
- Emotive Language and Second Person. Strong feeling words plus the "you" voice keep the audience emotionally inside the speech.
- The Rhetorical Question. A single short question breaks the rhythm and signals a turn in the argument.
- The Direct Topic Statement. Name the topic plainly, early. Do not bury it.
- Questions and Contrast. Pair questions with one strong contrasting image (looking down versus looking up). The audience holds the image for the rest of the talk.
- The Cultural Reference. Borrow emotional weight from a piece of pop culture the audience already knows.
- The Personal Anecdote. A first-person story is the strongest evidence a short speech has.
- Callback, Repetition and Call to Action. Loop back to your opening, repeat a key word, and end with one clear thing for the audience to do.
How to use this with your child
A four-step home workshop
- Read the speech aloud once together. No analysis at this stage. Listen for the sound. Notice where it speeds up and where it slows down.
- Read it again with the technique notes. Stop at each note and ask your child to underline the words in the speech that match the technique.
- Ask your child to write a short speech of their own. Three minutes maximum. Pick any topic they care about. Tell them to use at least four of the eight techniques on the list.
- Have them perform it. To you, to a sibling, to the wall. The audience does not matter. The performance is what teaches.
The original "Look Up" reference
The speech above borrows the central image from Gary Turk's spoken-word poem "Look Up", which went viral on YouTube in 2014 and has been viewed more than 75 million times. The poem still carries weight a decade later, and watching it once is a useful rehearsal step before performing the speech above.
Watch "Look Up" on YouTube
Search for "Look Up Gary Turk" on YouTube to find the original 2014 spoken-word video. Run-time is around five minutes.
Find the Video on YouTube →For HK families preparing for the Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival public speaking classes or the speaking section of the HKDSE English paper, the how to write speeches tips page covers structure and planning, and the improve speaking page covers the delivery side.
Ready to help your child write and deliver their own?
The Speech Festival package walks your child from a chosen topic to a polished performance, with audio of native speakers, week-by-week practice and feedback on delivery. The Drills for Skills workbooks build the vocabulary that strong speeches rest on. Both arrive as instant PDFs, printable at home, with marking schemes included.