A Welcome Speech, Annotated
A complete student welcome speech with eight techniques highlighted. Useful for HK students leading school events, Reading Week openings, prefect ceremonies, or the speaking section of HKDSE English.
A welcome speech is a leadership speech
Welcoming an audience is more demanding than it sounds. The speaker has to set the tone for the entire event in the first thirty seconds. Get it right and the audience leans in. Get it wrong and a tired hall stays tired.
The speech below was written for a HK secondary student opening Reading Week and welcoming a featured author to the school. Read it aloud once before reading the annotations. Notice how the formal opening softens into a personal anecdote, then builds into a clear call to action by the close. That arc is what good welcome speeches do.
The Speech
"Reading Week: Welcome Speech" delivered by a student Reading Club president at the opening evening of a school Reading Week, welcoming featured author John Marsden.
"Reading Week: Welcome Speech"
Good evening teachers, students and guests. My name is Sally Chung and I am the president of the Reading Club. I'd like to welcome everyone to the opening night of Reading Week.
The greeting names the audience formally in order of seniority, teachers first. The speaker then identifies herself by name and role. A welcome speech without these two moves leaves the audience asking who is talking and on whose authority. Confident speakers introduce themselves cleanly and move on.
On behalf of the whole school, I'd like to extend a special welcome to John Marsden, our featured author for this year's events. Tonight I'm going to talk about what Reading Week means, the importance of Mr Marsden's visit, and the events we have planned.
Two moves at once. The special welcome to the guest of honour shows respect and tells the audience why this guest matters. The signposting line then maps the speech in three parts. Audiences listen better when they know where the speech is heading. Three parts is the right number, four becomes a list.
What was the first book you ever read? My earliest childhood memory is of my mum reading "Good Night Moon" to me every night before bed. I learnt to love books because it meant spending time with my mum.
One short question shifts the speech from formal greeting to personal memory. The audience is now thinking about their own first book. A specific childhood anecdote lands harder than a general statement about reading because the audience pictures the scene. Specificity is what gives the technique its power.
As I grew older, I read stories that made me passionate about Human Rights and the environment. Books made me the person that I am.
The speaker delivers her thesis in personal form. "Books made me the person that I am" is a strong, declarative sentence. Said as a personal observation it sounds earned. Said as an abstract claim it would sound preachy. The technique is to put the thesis in the speaker's own life rather than in the air.
That's why The Reading Club has worked so hard preparing for this week. We believe in the power of stories to inspire, inform, challenge and entertain. Books create lasting memories and inspire you to make the world a better place.
"That's why" links the previous personal anecdote to a larger statement about why the event exists. The same idea ("books matter") that arrived earlier as a personal memory now arrives as a confident statement on behalf of the club. Repeating the central idea in different forms (memory, then statement) is a basic but useful structural move.
That leads me to our special invited guest, John Marsden. His books are extremely popular at our library with boys and girls of all ages. His stories contain important messages about friendship, compassion and the lessons of adolescence. I'm sure his workshops will continue to inspire many of you this week. He's also happy to answer any of your questions.
"That leads me to" is a deliberate transition phrase. It tells the audience the speech is moving on. The speaker then describes the guest in concrete terms (popular at the library, themes of friendship and adolescence) before pivoting to direct address with "many of you" and "any of your questions". The audience is no longer being talked at, they are being invited in.
Along with our Meet-the-Author night, there are many other exciting events planned for Reading Week. Our poetry slam event seeks to inspire the love of poetry. Book stalls will operate every lunch period. You'll have the chance to buy the beautiful hand-made books created by our younger students. Competition winners for short story prizes will be announced every morning. Check the main notice board for our complete schedule of events.
The list risks reading as a dry programme of events. The speaker rescues it with concrete textures that no other school's Reading Week would have. Hand-made books from younger students. Daily short-story prize announcements. The detail signals real preparation and separates this event from any generic version. When listing events, always ask which detail makes this event different.
Before you go and enjoy the festivities, I'll leave you with two quotes. The first is by Diane Duane: "Reading one book is like eating one potato chip." The other is by Jhumpa Lahiri: "That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet." So to all of you here, now's the time to get travelling.
Two quotes, one humorous and one inspiring, give the close variety. The Diane Duane line earns a smile and softens the audience for the inspiring close. Jhumpa Lahiri's line is a clean image about books as travel. The final call to action ("now's the time to get travelling") plays on that image, finishes the speech with the audience moving rather than sitting, and earns the applause without asking for it.
"A welcome speech is a leadership speech in miniature. The speaker sets the tone for the room, and the room follows."
Want a step-by-step guide to writing your own welcome or opening speech?
See How to Write Speeches →Eight techniques worth stealing
Read the speech once for sound, once for technique. Then ask your child to find each technique in another welcome speech they have heard at school recently. Naming the technique is the first step to using it.
The eight techniques in order
- Formal Opening and Speaker Introduction. Greet the audience by group, name yourself, name your role. Three quick moves before any content begins.
- Special Welcome and Signposting. Single out the guest of honour, then preview the speech in three parts so the audience knows where it is going.
- Rhetorical Question and Childhood Anecdote. Switch from formal to personal with a question, then give a specific memory. Specificity is what makes the anecdote land.
- Personal Observation as Central Message. Put the thesis of the speech in your own life so it sounds earned, not preachy.
- Linking Sentence and Statement Form. Repeat the central idea later in confident statement form. Repetition without sounding repetitive.
- Linking Phrase and Direct Audience Address. Transition phrases like "that leads me to" steer the audience. The "you" voice keeps them inside the speech.
- Listing With Unique Details. Avoid the generic events list. Pull out the textures that make this event distinct.
- Quotation Pair and Call to Action. One humorous quote, one inspiring quote, then a clean closing line that asks the audience to do something.
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 rhythm. Notice where it shifts from formal to personal and back.
- 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 welcome speech of their own. Three minutes maximum. The occasion suggests itself: a class event, a school assembly, a club meeting they belong to. Tell them to use at least four of the eight techniques on the list.
- Have them perform it. To a parent, to a sibling, to the wall. Welcome speeches are about presence as much as words. Performing the draft is what reveals what works.
Three other speech types worth annotating
Each speech type uses a slightly different mix of techniques. A welcome speech opens an event. An inspirational speech changes a mind. A persuasive speech argues a position. A farewell speech closes a chapter. Reading worked examples of each makes the differences obvious.
Inspirational Speech
An annotated student speech on phone obsession and missed opportunities. Shows hooks, rhetorical questions, personal anecdote and a call to action.
See the inspirational example →Persuasive Speech
A speech that argues a clear position with evidence, contrast and a call for the audience to act differently as a result.
See the persuasive example →Farewell Speech
A speech that closes a chapter with gratitude, memory and a forward-looking thought, useful for graduation and prefect handovers.
See the farewell example →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 tip page covers structure and planning, and the Speech Festival FAQs covers the festival side. The improve speaking page covers delivery.
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.