hi all in this video i'll be going through the structure of the gcse dance written paper and i'll also be talking about timings and some key techniques that you can use to help you succeed in the written paper so component one of the gcse is all of the practical work and component two is this theory paper which is called dance appreciation okay it's one hour and 30 minutes and it is marked out of 80 and you have three sections i'm going to go through each section in a little bit more detail later on in the video but just to give you a little bit of context you've got section a which is all about choreographic processes and performance skills and those are short answer questions section b which is called a critical appreciation of own work so the questions will relate to your own experiences of performance choreography or both from within the course so you'll be asked questions about your actual practice and section c is a critical appreciation of professional works so you'll look at six professional works throughout the course and you'll be asked about these and you will need to be able to analyze evaluate identify similarities and differences and explain and justify your own opinions and reasoning okay so my first tip is all about timing a lot of previous students have found this tip really really helpful because there is a lot to do within this paper in the time that you have so within the paper it will give you these timings the examiners advise you to spend 30 minutes on section a 25 minutes on section b and 35 minutes on section c so my advice is when you when you're about to start the paper and that time gets written up on the board by the invigilator for example if you're starting at one o'clock i would make a note on the front of the paper that by 1 30 you need to have finished section a and by 1 55 you will have need to have finished and moved on from section b so that is um my first top tip and you could actually go into even more detail there when you get better and better at practicing the paper so section b for example um you could break into time timings for for that so um spending six to eight minutes on each question but i'm going to go into a little bit more detail later on with this let's break down each section then so section a is out of 30 and you must know all about choreographic processes so this is going to be hypothetical choreography so it's a made-up piece of choreography and there is a whole playlist on the youtube channel about this to give you more detail where you'll be given a stimulus and you need to come up with a choreographic intention and you'll be asked questions after that so you must know all key choreographic terminology so action dynamic spatial and relationship content you need to know choreographic processes structuring devices choreographic devices you need to know oral settings and how these affect choreographic outcomes so for example how they affect the mood and the atmosphere you need to understand what different performance environments are and you need to understand what communication of choreographic intent is okay so that's all of the choreographic terminology that you need to know and then um research into further and for performance skills you must know all the different performance skills categories and all the different um all the different vocabulary that comes with this so you need to know physical technical expressive and mental skills you need to know safe working practices the processes and during performance okay so please make sure that you do extra work around these and you go to the relevant places on the youtube channel to find more about these areas if you need more help key helpful tips for section a so firstly read ahead on hypothetical choreography this is mentioned um in the hypothetical choreography videos that are on youtube for more detail about that check how many marks a question is worth so it's a mark a minute for this um for this section but it's really really important that you double check how many marks each question is worth because if for example the question is a described question and it's worth two marks very often you'll just get one mark for a simple description and two marks for something slightly more detailed so you must must must double check check the command word and read the question really really carefully so um key command words within section a include give describe define outline okay if the question is asking you to give or name you just need to say whereas for describe or define you obviously need to give more detail and do those command words get lots of practice so that you can complete this section quicker than 30 minutes to give you more time for the other sections so this is really key for people that really want to succeed on this paper you should practice this lots and lots so that you can really smash out a section a quickly to allow you more time to answer the extended writing questions okay key places for extra revision will be um your glossary for key definitions the youtube channel the section a frog site and your revision guide and within those places you will be able to find a breakdown of those key choreographic and performance skills so that you can do a little bit more work where you need it section b is out of 18 marks and within section b you will be asked three six mark questions okay it will ask you um about either your performance skills or your choreography skills now if it's asking you about your performance skills it will be in relation to your set phrases or your performance piece um or if it's about the choreography skills it will be about your solo or your group choreography so you just need to check that carefully they can only ask you about those areas for section b you want to be using the kec structure that you hear us talk about a lot so that is knowledge evidence and contribution and for top marks you're aiming for five to six good really good kcs throughout your answer okay so here's some examples um of two questions that you might be asked first of all um a physical a performance skills question sorry so explain how you use technical skills to contribute to the overall effectiveness of one of your set phrases so that is a performance question that they could ask you and here's a choreography question explain how your choice of oral setting supported the choreographic intent of your choreography okay top tips for section b so have some really good evidence examples ready to go and actually when you're doing practical lessons it's good to be a real thinking dancer so if you're working on an alignment exercise for example think about how you might explain that and describe that example think about what alignment contributes to an overall performance why it's important for a dancer to have okay and think carefully about linking correct and relevant contributions to different skills so it's about really um really integrating that practical and theory within your practice all the time okay when you've actually got the paper there in front of you though you want to first of all highlight the keywords in the question and i always call it word dump or mind map around the question with key terminology so that you straight away think right i know what i'm being asked to do and i've got some skills that i can draw on okay it sounds like a silly thing to say but make sure you're talking about the correct dance that's really really important if the question is asking you about the set phrases and uh you misread it and start talking about your choreography or what sometimes happens is people are asked about the performance piece and they accidentally talk about their choreography that can then be a real issue for you and you wouldn't get any marks okay so just be really really conscious of that it's really important to state your choreographic intention at the start of section b questions so that the examiner knows um you know what the dance was all about and so that you can link the relevant contributions to uh the choreographic intention okay so even for the set phrases at the start of the start of your answer you would need to say i am going to talk about shift for example because that is the choreographic intention and spend six to eight minutes per question on section b so i know i spoke about top tips for timing but if you want to go even more in depth with practice in this paper and really getting your timings on point i would write down the key timings at the top of section b so when you start section b you have a quick look at the clock and you think right in six minutes time i need to have moved on from this first question and so on okay so those are top tips for section b section c is out of 32 and this is probably the most challenging part of the paper well in fact it is the most challenging part of the paper because it's requiring you to analyze evaluate bring together similarities and differences and give your own opinion and justify and justify that it also requires you to obviously crit critically appreciate other dance works so you need to make sure that you're watching those works regularly and that you really sort of get your teeth stuck into them okay so i'm going to go through the structure of section c now you'll have a one marker linked to a six marker where you will use the kec structure so for every time you have six markers on the paper you use kc and this could ask you about choreographic content or production features in a professional work okay so i'll show you some examples here so identify one action used in a lena curve that is your one mark and then the sixth marker is explain how the choreographic content helps the audience's understanding of the idea of having fun in a leaner curve six marks so you can see how this six marker has opened up the one marker and you're being asked to speak about choreographic content in that work okay next the next part of the paper will be a one marker linked to a 12 marker okay and this will be one set work and two production features and for this question we encourage you to use um dice ingredients okay so um if you want to know a little bit more about that or if you need to refresh your knowledge on that please go away and watch the 12 mark video which goes into more depth of just this type of question so name the performance environment used in within her eyes is our one marker and then our 12 marker opens out and filters on from that one marker which is discuss how the performance environment and dance for camera contribute to the choreographic intent of within her eyes so the production feature is the performance environment and um dance for camera and we're looking at the choreographic intention of the set work within her eyes okay the next part of the paper so the final part which is probably the most challenging question on the whole paper is 12 marker compare and contrast question which is based on two set works and one production feature so you're needing to compare and contrast similarities and differences okay again there is a video on just how to tackle this where you will learn more about what solid face is an acronym okay it's a tool to unlock different contribution points that you could talk about in this question and we use the csi effect as our writing ingredients okay so again if you don't know what i'm talking about please make sure that you watch um the video dedicated to tackling this question so here's an example using your knowledge of the similarities and differences in the oral settings used in infra and shadows discuss how the oral settings enhance our appreciation of these two works okay so you can see how we've got our production feature which is all set setting and we need to compare how both works use those oral settings and what they contribute to those works okay helpful tips for section c so as i said before it's so so important that you watch the works and choreographer interviews regularly if you're doing that then whatever question you're faced with you will be able to almost close your eyes and see the work in your head and draw relevant examples okay it's also nice to actually build up a real passion for the set works and actually enjoy watching them have favorites have opinions um and bring those to your discussion okay highlight the keywords in the question for these extended writing questions really really important that we um that we make sure that we understand what the question is asking of us and again word dump around the question with key bits of terminology to help you build your answer as i said with section b but this time um you're you're needing to talk about the correct dance in terms of the professional works everyone in the heat of a moment in an exam can be a bit nervous and you need to make sure that you're actually talking about the correct set work otherwise you would get the whole question wrong it's a mark a minute for the one markers but obviously they're really um they should be quite easy so hopefully they won't take a minute and you can use um you can use some of those seconds somewhere else um in your extended writing for all six mark questions spend about six to eight minutes as i said in section b and for your 12 markers spend 12 to 15 minutes per question hopefully you've made some time up um so you've hopefully you can work through section a a bit quicker so that you give yourself as much time as possible on these more challenging longer questions and as i said before time yourself so write down key timings at the top of that section so that you know when you've got to move on by okay what we really advise is quality over quantity we want you to think of section c as it being building blocks and you bring into the discussion what you know so please don't freak out when you see um the question the reason why also we're calling them writing ingredients rather than structures is so that you can just start to build your answer up bring in what you know and being able to shape your writing in the way that's going to best suit you and the question okay and as i've said before the best um the best places you can go to are our youtube channel there's breakdowns of all different videos of set works and also of actually answering the extended writing questions the section c fog site has those videos on and it's also the place where you can find all of the set work videos make sure you use your booklets you should have um a booklet for each set work that you study where you can make lots of notes and keep revising from there use your revision guide and also using past papers is going to be really really helpful i hope this video has helped in you understanding the written paper a little bit more please do ask any questions if you have any and please continue to revise and practice lots of questions and make sure that you keep watching the set works