Dragons' Den - Motormouse

With this well-rounded worksheet students will practise listening skills, saying numbers (which in my experience seems to be a problem even for higher-level learners, especially when it comes to large numbers), presenting business ideas and negotiating - if their pitches are good enough to take them to the negotiation stage. All Dragons's Den episodes are packed with handy business expressions, and this one is no different.

As a follow-up speaking exercise I usually have my students pith their own business idea. If they have a hard time coming up with one, I let them pick either an existing product or service or I bring pictures of chindogu inventions and have them choose one (chindogu are silly 'useful-useless' devices, seemingly ingenious but first and foremost funny - my students always enjoy this option the most). Depending on the size of the class, you can ask students to work in pairs or groups of three. While one group of 'entrepreneurs' pitch their idea, the rest of the class act our the role of the 'Dragons', i.e. business angels and judges on the show. They need to grill the business partners making the pitch in order to decide whether their business could be viable and worth investing in. Make sure that you pre-teach the expression used in the reality show: 'I'm out' and 'I'd like to make you an offer'. Try not to interrupt the activity too much, but let them improvise and have with it. Any feedback on the language they use and the mistakes they make can be provided after the have finished.

If you would like to teach some grammar with this video, you can draw students' attention to how Peter Jones uses the third conditional in his response to the entrepreneurs' pitch. If you teach an upper-intermediate or advanced course, it will be interesting to highlight the fact that he uses inversion and skips the 'if' in his condition clause (Had you come here and asked for £50,000, you would have got me).