TOEFL iBT, Independent Writing, Dancing plays an important role in a culture.

Writing Topic: Consider the following statement. Dancing plays an important role in a culture. Do you agree or disagree with this idea? Support your response by including specific reasons and examples.

☆Let’s think

This statement is short and simple but has a few parts you can use to develop ideas. To begin with its subject dancing, you can brainstorm what you know about dancing. You could ask yourself questions like when people dance or whether you ever found dancing useful. Then you can note the article “a” in the expression “play an important role”. This means that there are some things that play an important role in a culture and dancing is one of them. Now the last word “a culture” shows that although dancing might not be important in the modern world, in an individual culture, it could be taken seriously.

☆Hints for points

Agree

1.    Dancing is universal: It seems impossible to find a culture without its traditional dances along with its traditional singing, costumes, and ceremonies. Thus dancing must play a significant role in a culture.

2.    Dancing appears in important moments in life: When important events are held, we often see dancing. Festivals, marriages, and funerals often involve dancing. Big shows on TV have dancers. Halftime dance in the American football might be another example that shows dancing is still in place in modern life.

3.    Dancing informs people of the view of the universe and values in a culture and facilitates passing down tradition: For example, it is said that Balinese dancing is part of the system of the traditional Balinese culture. For thousands of years, people in Bali dedicated their dancing to their gods as part of their religious practices. Each of the dances represents a character and its story in the Balinese mythology. By watching or participating in the activity, people in Bali learn and live the fiction that their culture is based on. The same can be said more or less in the relationships between dancing and other cultures.

4.    Dancing helps nonverbal-communication and socialization: Dancing can be the most basic art form. Like music, it does not basically require understanding of the language. Japanese Obon dances, or instance, consist of only a few simple steps and body movements, and this allows anyone to jump in the dancing crowd. Dancing is used to help people wind down at parties, and one of the most common and popular hangout spots for the young is the disco.

5.    Dancing helps reduce stress and violence. Many people go dancing to release stress. Many traditional dances also function as catalyst for the release of stress of a community and prevent catastrophe in reality. Dance beats and repetitive movements make people feel good. A Balinese dance called kecak, pronounced kechak, is very emotional and some dancers of it often fall into trance. Lion dances, found in many places in Asia, feature the holy animal with scary appearances moving around vigorously and making people alert by posing to eat them. All of these examples show that dancing is related to releasing stress both on the individual and collective level.

Disagree or partly disagree

1.    Traditional dances do not play an important part in a modern culture: Traditional dances work only in the realm of traditional cultures. For example, traditional views of the world and values are not made much of anymore although probably they should be. The power of dancing to teach community members values is weakening with globalization in progress, where traditional systems are being replaced by capitalism.

2.    Dancing does not help keep society peaceful anymore: People do not go dancing to “blow off steam” anymore. Cases of traditional dances helping keep community cohesion are decreasing. There are many other activities to release stress now like driving or riding a roller coaster, and bonding is done through social networking services.

3.    In capitalism, the type of dances popular among the public are commercial: Just like fashion, music and other culture-related commodities, dances that become popular today are focused on entertainment. They are sensual, light and easy to please the main target consumers, the young. Although commercially important, the most popular modern dances are not important in any cultures.

4.    Dancing is not popular even as an entertainment in modern society: Compared to other activities for entertainment such as going to the movie or karaoke, dancing is not a common choice. There is no dancing place for families, nor is it one of the top choices of fun activities of a gathering. Once in a while, simple dances tied-up with a song or anime come and go, but just as a one-hit-wonder and no one would remember them five years later.

5.    It has not survived the test of time: As it has been beaten by time and plays less part in modern societies, it cannot be no more important in a culture than other traditional activities which have been replaced by new activities and that are treated as curiosity now like Noh or haiku.