"Shark Tank" Communication

This course outline is designed for a Level 7 advanced communication course at Portland Community College. It addresses listening, speaking, pronunciation, and presentation skills within the theme of entrepreneurship by drawing inspiration from the TV show “Shark Tank” and its various incarnations in other languages/countries around the world. 

The curriculum is designed for a term of 8 weeks. Each class period is 3 hours long, and the class meets twice weekly for a total of 16 class periods plus final exam. During the course, students complete several projects: 

• • a survey of people outside of class

  • a report to the class about the survey results

  • a video commercial for a new product

  • a live pitch for a new product to a panel of guest “sharks”

The course outline links to all supporting materials in the form of Google Docs, Google Forms, Google Slides, Quizlets, YouTube videos, etc. 

This project was funded in part by a grant from Open Oregon Educational Resources.

UPDATE: If you find the Quizlets behind a paywall, here are free H5P versions that you can use and even embed in your LMS: 

• Vocabulary 01

• Vocabulary 02

• Vocabulary 03

• Vocabulary 04

• (Vocabulary 05 are student-selected words)

• Vocabulary 06

Also, in practice, I found the game-show warm-ups to be a bit more complicated and less useful than originally imagined, so you might want to substitute other things.

Finally, I have successfully substituted an audio commercial for a video commercial to make it easier tech-wise.