Lesson 4 - Writing your Opening speech
Fellow MUNprep students,
Every single day, hundreds of delegates walk in to their first committee session and have no idea what to say. They’re scared, speechless and feel out of place – they start to doubt themselves and fear they might not carry out the policy objectives that they have spent weeks refining. the reason? It’s because they didn’t take the time to prepare an opening speech!
These delegates can have a slow start to their conference that they can often fail to recover from, your conference weekend is short and first impressions are important. It can be a lifesaver to spend a few extra minutes putting together a strong opening speech that summarizes their key objectives.
Today, we’ll help save you from the shame of not knowing what to say and will help you to write the best opening speech for your next conference.
The Opening Speech
For any Model UN conference, delegates have a number of key speaking opportunities, but few are as important as the opening speech. When the committee begins, there will be a motion to open the speakers list and delegates who want to make an opening speech can raise their placards and get added to the list.
At its core, this speech gives you the chance to highlight your core policy objectives in a 30-90 second address. It’s the only speech that you can really prepare for in advance and is a great opportunity to show off some of your research and ideas. Other delegates are trying to see if they might want to work with you and the committee chair will start figuring out who to look out for.
Opening Speech essentials
So there are a few key ideas that you should keep in mind before you start writing your next opening speech:
● Don’t confuse an opening speech with your position paper. You don’t have as much time to flesh out all your ideas so make sure to stick to the highlights. Besides, everyone in your committee should know the context of your topics by now – stick to 1 or 2 key statistics and start marketing your solutions
● In most cases, you will have under 2 minutes to speak, this normally comes to just under 300 words. If you can only make a 30 second speech, that might only be 75 words!
● If your committee has multiple topics, you might have to prepare multiple opening speeches – 1 to argue for the topic you would like discussed first, and then an opening speech for each individual topic depending on which was chosen.
● It is the one speech that you are allowed to prepare in advance. Otherwise, most committees like to see all of your work completed while in the conference room.
Establishing your brand
The opening speech represents the perfect opportunity to set up your brand for the rest of the committee - think about how you want the other delegates to remember you. Try your best to tell a story that makes sense and that you can carry out through the rest of the weekend. Some useful places to start thinking are:
Is there a particular idea that you want to be known for?
Do you believe that a certain aspect of the topic requires more focus?
Is your state especially important on some certain aspect of the topic?
Remember that there are a lot of delegates speaking at the start of the committee and a number of ideas will be thrown around - some delegates will be taking notes and will be able to write only one or two things down about you, make their job as easy as you can so its easier for them to want to work with you.
The speech writing recipe
Like any good story, your opening speech needs a beginning, middle and end. You should draw your listener in at the start, hit them with the key points and give them something to remember at the very end.
At every step in your speech, you’re going to need to do a few things – this list can help you to put something together that will work every time.
Beginning
Quick Opening – Acknowledge your committee members and Dais
An opening line – start with something strong – questions or a firm statement can work best.
If you use a question make it something that gets them to think – make sure you have the answer for that question too.
Pick one of the most interesting statistics you can find, make sure someone else wont use it too. Don’t get too caught up with background – everyone knows it already
Don’t start with something from the background guide – it needs to be fresh
Middle
Bring in your key solutions, outline where you stand and why its best
Highlight your countries position and why its so important.
Bring up your delegation name a few times, this can be important to establishing your brand.
End
Use a quick call to action, what they should do – would you like them to send you a note, would you like to talk during an unmod. Use this time to activate your audience
Make a quick thank you and let the next delegate speak.
Using writing tools to make it memorable - Coming soon!
What to remember with your Speech
Here are a few things that you should keep in mind for your next Model UN opening speech:
Embrace the nerves – the idea of speaking in front of a room of people is scary to anybody, but that’s okay. It can help you to prepare more thoroughly and get ready to make an even higher quality opening speech.
Organize your material – consider how your audience is going to receive it, make sure that they can pick up the information that you’re giving them and helping them to build a picture while you make it. Spitting out a bunch of statistics when they don’t have any context is never going to help anybody.
Leverage your personality – Embrace your personality and what makes you who you are, you want delegates to trust you and authenticity is the best way to do that. It will help them to feel more comfortable approaching you
How are you going to finish your speech – let’s face it, even if you had a 10-minute choreographed dance routine, some of the members of your committee are going to drift off. Finish strong, give a final punchy point, a quick call to action and let something stick in their head.
Eye contact is key – let people know that you’re speaking to them, with a prepared speech it can be easy to drift back off, but you have to make sure that you keep your readers engaged for as long as you can.
Think about your gestures – since you have a chance to prepare your speech, you also have an opportunity to talk to yourself in front of a mirror and see what it all looks like, Personally, my hands wave all over the place when I’m making a speech, I point at things and I draw random shapes in the air.
Think about your audience – remember who they are, what type of language you should use, what do they know/need to know, what is their attitude towards you as a speaker.
Include your Delegation Name – Mention the country/person you’re representing a few times so committee members know who to look for.
Practice makes perfect!
Once you’ve written up your opening speech, try it out a few times, give yourself an idea for the timing and make sure that you emphasize whats important.
Practise with team members so you can start to get comfortable speaking with an audience.
The Ladder Method to Opening Speech writing
The speaking time allotted to an Opening speech is normally determined on the day in your committee session. This means that you never know exactly how long your Opening speech will need to be. So you have to be prepared for every situation. Generally, the best way to get around this is by using the Ladder method - write out your entire speech that has all of the ideas that you want to include, make sure that it’s as long as the maximum time that you might be asked to speak for your committee, this is generally 2 minutes. After you have your full speech. Highlight certain sentences in different colours that represent different speaking time lengths (Generally the most commonly used speaking times will be 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 1 minute). This way you can have a speech that is punchy in every situation and you can always fill up the speaking time that is allotted.
Try writing your own speech with the Ladder method!
Closing
In conclusion, fellow delegates - there are only a few things that you should remember.
Practise is an important aspect to making a sleek presentation
Always try to establish your brand right from the start
Try your best to tell a story that makes sense and that you can carry out through the rest of the weekend.
