SHARK TANK Lesson Plan

I have  a Pre-Intermediate business group and we've been covering a lot of negotioating language material. (We have The Business pre-int book). To liven up the classes a little bit I decided to show them a part of American TV show Shark Tank. There is a British version called Dragon's Den, but, in my opinion, the former is much more entertaining. The premise of both shows is entrepreneurs'  search for investment in their, often a bit crazy, product or service. This is the activity I've developed.

1. First, introduce the show and watch the beginning of the episode and ask students to sum up the purpose of Shark Tank. Then give them the names of the sharks, play video again and ask them to connect the shark and the description.

1.  Kevin O'Leary
2. Barbara Corcoran
3. Daymond John
4. Robert Herjavec
5. Marc Cuban

• Immigrant who has a technology business
• Venture capitalist who started his software business in a basement
• Billionaire who also owns a sports team
• Real estate entrepreneur from New York
• Owner of fashion brand FUBU

2. After checking the information about the investors, move on to the episode. I chose a part of episode 3 from season 3 about an entrepreneur who created parfume called Money. You can find it on youtube, the part starts from 11.33

Watch the beginning of his speech till 12.30, stop the video and ask students what his product is. Even if some language is still a little bit difficult at this point, they will be able to understand the idea from the visuals. Make them discuss what they think about this idea, whether it can be successful or not. 

3. At this point you may want to introduce some challenging vocabulary. I picked the following words: bill, the come up with, to licence, distribution, retailers, to seek, scent, fragrance, subtle.  Then start from the top again and watch the video till 15.35 and ask students to find answers to the following questions.

1. How much money is he seeking?
2. Does he own the name?
3. What are his sales?
4. What is the problem with retailers?
5. How much has he invested?
6. How did he come up with this idea?
7. What kind of proposal did banks make him?
8. What's unique about his packaging?
9. What do you think is his USP?

(The last question was inspired by the topic of advertisement we've studied recently. If your students are not familiar with this concept yout can omit it)

4. After students check the answers in pairs and with the teacher (you may need to rewatch some parts), ask them whether they think he would strike a deal with anyone. Then watch the rest of the video which contains the negotiations and ask them to answer the following questions

• Which sharks are out? Why?
• Which shark(s) make(s) offers? What kind of offer?
• Does he accept the offer(s)? Why/Why not?

5. You can have an open discussion afterwards on whether he made the right choice or not.

6. Then move on to the tasks on the language from the video. I decided to focus on some colloquial phrases the sharks and the entrepreneur used. In this activity, students watch the video again and put the phrases in the order they hear them and write the name of the speaker next to them. In pairs they discuss the meaning of the phrases.

1. You are a wantepreneur not an entrepreneur
2. You have an offer on a table
3. Can I get an Amen? Preach, brother, preach!
4. The 80% was just out of line
5. Money can't buy you happiness... but who cares?
6. This is your big play here. You got to walk out of the tank with the cash in your pocket.
7. That's always a red flag.

7. After you have checked the understanding, you can have a role-play. My students have written a business plan for a food business before, so we used it as a material for presentation. Students worked in two teams where one team was presenting their business and the second was acting as investors. Their purpose was to decide whether to sponsor the business or not. You can distribute the lines from previous exercise and ask students to use them in their speech.

8. As a homework option I developed two vocabulary exercises on the language from the video. If students really enjoyed it you can ask them to watch the first part of the video (the guitar entrepreneur) at home and write a short summary (what's the business, details of the business, how negotiations went, did he strike a deal etc).

Student's worksheet with answers is available here.