[MUSIC] Hello, congratulations on making it through the four courses of the Business English Communications Skills Specialization. We're glad that you have joined us for the capstone project. This project will give you the chance to apply many of the skills that you've learned in these courses to a real life situation. And when you successfully complete it, you will earn your certificate. Before we begin, let's summarize the main things that you have learned in the specialization. In networking, you learned about introducing yourself and talking about your city, your company, and your job in professional situations, like on the telephone or at events. You learned about arranging to meet someone. You also learned about tone. How to be formal and informal, and how to be direct or indirect in writing. In the second course about meetings, you learned about setting up, running, and participating in meetings. You also learned about reporting on research and data, and writing formal proposals. In the third course about planning and negotiations, you learned about planning an event, describing services, negotiating and persuading people, and customer service. And finally, in our course on presentations, you learned about giving effective presentations, using slides and describing visuals like charts, and more about being persuasive in your writing and speaking. There are a lot of skills there. So let me explain how you will be using them in your capstone project. The capstone project for this specialization involves writing a formal plan, and giving an oral presentation to persuade someone to invest money in a product or service. Does that sounds familiar? Well, you may know a TV show where people present their ideas to a group of business people. In the US, this show is called Shark Tank, but there are different names all over the world with names like tiger, shark, dragon or lion. Your project is based on a similar format. In these shows, people give a short presentation or pitch about their product or service. If the investors like the pitch, they invest their money in the company. We've added a short written business plan along with the pitch, because it's also good to have something a little more detailed in writing. You will use a lot of what you've learned about business speaking in networking, presenting, and persuading for your pitch. And in the business plan, you will use a lot of what you learned about business writing. Okay, let's talk about the organization of the project. You will choose a product or service and develop your plan and presentation around this. Then each week, we will focus on a specific part of the project with videos, examples and resources. You'll also be responsible for completing a milestone each week, as you work towards the final submission of your work. You'll be joining other learners from around the world in this project, and you'll have an opportunity to share ideas, get feedback, and help each other as you work on your project with the peer assessments and discussion forums. A final point, be sure to read about the capstone project expectations and grading rubric so you know exactly what you'll be doing. I hope that you will have fun completing this project and sharing your ideas. And that this will be an opportunity to demonstrate your abilities in business English communication. [MUSIC]
