Understanding Speaker Roles in WSDC
In [World Schools Debating](/about/blog/understanding-wsdc-format-complete-guide-world-schools-debating), each speaker position carries distinct responsibilities and requires different skill sets. Mastering your role is essential for team success. Here's everything you need to know about executing each position at the highest level.
The First Speaker: Foundation and Setup
The first speaker sets the entire debate's trajectory. Your speech must establish definitions, framework, and deliver compelling initial arguments.
Opening: The Rhetorical Hook (30-60 seconds)
Begin with a powerful framing device that captures attention and establishes your perspective:
Historical Example: "In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.' Today, we argue that silence in the face of injustice—through inaction on climate change—is the greatest moral failing of our generation."
Emotional Appeal: "Imagine a student, brilliant and hardworking, denied opportunities not because of their abilities but because of their parents' income. This is the reality that private education creates."
Logical Link: "Every functioning democracy rests on an informed citizenry. When we allow private interests to control education, we undermine the very foundation of democratic society."
Setup: Defining the Debate (1-2 minutes)
Define Ambiguous Terms:
- Only define terms that genuinely require clarification
- Keep definitions reasonable and aligned with common understanding
- Example: "By 'ban,' we mean prohibiting the operation of fee-paying schools while protecting religious education and specialized institutions for students with disabilities"
Frame the Core Trade-off:
- Explicitly state what the debate is really about
- Example: "This debate asks us to choose: do we prioritize individual choice in education, or collective equality of opportunity?"
State Your Stance Clearly:
- One sentence that encapsulates your position
- This becomes your caseline, repeated by other speakers
- Example: "We believe that true educational opportunity cannot exist alongside an educational marketplace"
Outline the Speaker Split:
- "I will explain how private education entrenches inequality and undermines social mobility"
- "Our second speaker will demonstrate the economic inefficiency of parallel systems and extend our case by examining the civic costs"
- "Our third speaker will weigh the key clashes and explain why equality of opportunity outweighs parental choice"
Establish Your Winning Metric:
- How should judges evaluate success?
- Example: "Judge this debate on which side better promotes long-term educational equality and social mobility"
First Argument: Complete Development (2.5-3 minutes)
Tagline: Create a memorable, clear title
- "The Inequality Engine" or "Breaking the Privilege Cycle"
Mechanism 1—Reasoning:
"Private schools concentrate educational resources among wealthy families. When families pay £20,000-40,000 annually for education, those schools can afford smaller class sizes, better facilities, more specialized teachers, and extensive extracurricular programs."
Mechanism 1—Evidence:
"In the UK, private schools spend an average of £15,000 per student compared to £6,500 in state schools. This 2.3x spending gap translates directly to educational advantages."
Mechanism 2—Reasoning:
"These advantages compound over time, leading to better examination results, university admissions, and career opportunities. Elite universities in the UK admit private school students at rates far exceeding their population proportion."
Mechanism 2—Evidence:
"While only 7% of UK students attend private schools, they represent 45% of Oxbridge admissions and 74% of top judiciary appointments."
Mechanism 3—Reasoning:
"This creates a self-perpetuating elite class. Wealthy, successful professionals send their children to the same private schools, ensuring their advantages pass to the next generation."
Mechanism 3—Evidence:
"Social mobility in the UK has declined over 50 years of expanding private education, with income increasingly predicting educational outcomes."
Impact and Weighing:
"This affects millions of students denied equal opportunities, perpetuates class divisions across generations, and undermines meritocracy. Unlike concerns about parental choice—which affect individual families—structural inequality affects entire societies across decades."
Second Argument: (2.5-3 minutes)
Follow the same structure: tagline, three mechanisms with evidence, impact, and weighing.
Conclusion: (30-60 seconds)
Summary: "We've shown that private education entrenches inequality and creates self-perpetuating elites"
Final Statement/Caseline: "True educational opportunity cannot exist alongside an educational marketplace. That's why we stand in support of this motion."
The Second Speaker: Rebuttal, Rebuilding, Extension
The second speaker faces the most complex task: responding to opposition while advancing your case.
Opening: Framing (30 seconds)
Use a rhetorical device that frames responses to follow:
"Our opponents paint a picture of choice and freedom, but scratch the surface and you'll find these freedoms belong only to those who can afford them."
Rebuttal: Dismantling Opposition (2.5-3 minutes)
Address 2-3 of their strongest arguments. Structure each response:
Tag: "They say private schools drive educational innovation"
Response 1: "However, innovation in education comes from educators, not institutions. Finland's entirely public system ranks among the world's best."
Response 2: "Moreover, their innovation argument ignores that private school innovations rarely transfer to public systems, creating further inequality."
Response 3: "Finally, even if private schools innovate faster, this proves our point—they're creating advantages unavailable to 93% of students."
Conclusion: "This shows their innovation argument fails because it actually demonstrates the inequality we're criticizing."
Repeat this structure for each opposition argument you're rebutting.
Rebuilding: Defending Your Case (1.5-2 minutes)
The opposition attacked your first speaker. Rebuild those arguments:
Tag: "They claim our equality argument ignores that public schools can be excellent"
Response 1: "However, we never said public schools can't be good—we said parallel private systems undermine efforts to make all public schools excellent."
Response 2: "Their examples of good public schools actually prove our point: when resources aren't diverted to private systems, public education thrives."
Conclusion: "This shows our equality argument still stands because their responses mischaracterize our position."
New Argument/Extension (2-2.5 minutes)
Introduce one new argument or significantly extend an existing one:
Tagline: "The Civic Cost of Educational Division"
Mechanism: Private education divides society into separate classes that don't interact, understand, or empathize with each other.
Evidence: Research showing private school students have less diverse social networks and different political attitudes.
Impact: Social cohesion, democratic legitimacy, and civic understanding all suffer.
Weighing: This civic dimension compounds the inequality arguments, showing the problem extends beyond individual opportunity to societal function.
Conclusion: (30 seconds)
Summary of your rebuttal, rebuilding, and new material, ending with the caseline.
The Third Speaker: Clash, Comparison, Conclusion
The third speaker delivers no new arguments—instead, you identify key clashes and explain why your team wins each one.
Opening: Setting Up Clashes (30 seconds)
"This debate has crystallized around three fundamental questions: [list them]. On each, our team provides superior analysis and impacts."
Clash 1: Win It (2-2.5 minutes)
What They Said:
"Opposition argues that parental choice is a fundamental right that government shouldn't restrict."
Why It Doesn't Stand:
"However, this argument fails for three reasons:
1. Rights aren't absolute—we restrict choice when it harms others (e.g., you can't choose to pollute)
2. They can't explain why wealthy parents' choices should determine poor students' opportunities
3. Their framework ignores that private school choice actively reduces choices for others by draining resources"
What We Said:
"We've argued that structural equality of opportunity is a prerequisite for a just society."
Why It Still Stands:
"Their responses haven't addressed our core mechanism: resource concentration creates compounding advantages. They've provided no counter-evidence to our data on admissions and social mobility."
Comparative Weighing:
Internal: "Our equality case stands while their choice case has been dismantled because they can't justify prioritizing individual preferences over systemic justice."
External: "Even if you grant their best case on choice, ask yourself: does one generation's freedom to purchase advantage outweigh multiple generations denied opportunity? The scope, scale, and longevity of inequality far exceeds temporary restrictions on parental choice."
Metrics: "We asked you to judge based on long-term educational equality. They've failed to engage with this standard."
Clash 2 & 3: (2-2.5 minutes each)
Repeat the same structure for the debate's other major clashes.
Conclusion: (30-60 seconds)
Summary: Briefly recap which clashes you've won
Final Caseline: "True educational opportunity cannot exist alongside an educational marketplace. That's why this house stands in support of the motion."
Reply Speeches: The Biased Judge's Summary
Reply speeches (4 minutes) serve as a summary from your team's perspective. Think of it as a biased judge explaining why your team won.
Structure (30-60 seconds intro, 2.5-3 minutes body, 30 seconds conclusion)
No New Material: Only discuss arguments raised in constructive speeches
Major Themes: Identify 2-3 key clashes that determined the debate
Comparative Analysis: Explain why your team won each clash
Storytelling: Weave a narrative about how the debate evolved and why you won
Example:
"This debate asked a fundamental question: how do we create a just education system? Opposition told you to trust the market, trust parental choice, trust that competition creates excellence. But we've shown the market has failed. Private education has concentrated resources, entrenched inequality, and undermined the very social mobility they claim to value. At every clash—on equality, on civic cohesion, on long-term societal benefit—we've provided superior analysis and evidence. That's why you should vote Proposition."
Common Mistakes by Speaker Position
First Speakers:
- Over-defining clear terms
- Weak or missing framework
- Incomplete argument development
- Poor time management (running out before second argument)
Second Speakers:
- Spending too long on rebuttal, rushing new material
- Responding to weak opposition arguments instead of strong ones
- Failing to rebuild first speaker's case
- Disconnected new argument that doesn't fit the team narrative
Third Speakers:
- Introducing new arguments (strictly prohibited)
- Addressing too many minor clashes instead of focusing on key ones
- Insufficient comparative weighing
- Simply repeating earlier material instead of providing fresh analysis of clashes
Developing Speaker-Specific Skills at Atlantic Ivy
Our training includes position-specific coaching:
First Speaker Training: Definition setting, framework establishment, argument structuring
Second Speaker Training: Rapid note-taking, rebuttal construction, case integration
Third Speaker Training: Clash identification, comparative analysis, strategic prioritization
Reply Speech Training: Synthesis, narrative construction, persuasive summarization
We also rotate students through positions so they understand how each role contributes to team success.
The Path to Mastery
Excellence in WSDC speaker roles comes from understanding your unique responsibilities and practicing them systematically. Whether you're naturally suited to the foundational work of first speaker, the adaptive challenge of second speaker, or the analytical demands of third speaker, Atlantic Ivy provides the training and competition experience you need to excel.