Tone and Attitude

Which of the following can be categorized as a tone question?

• the way the author or speaker expresses an attitude toward the subject and the audience

• actual emotion the author has toward the subject, audience(s), and him or herself

• general feeling or atmosphere that a piece of writing creates within the reader

• a formality scale

Which of the following is tone vocabulary?

• Indifference

• Reflective

• Ambivalence

• Disdain

Which of the following conveys negative tone?

• Cynical

• Ironic

• Baffled

• Irritated

Find a tone/attitude question:

• The information in lines x-y suggest that the author would view .... with …

• In the context of line 42, the phrase “dark husband to the midnight” means…

• The author’s use of italics in line 20 serves primarily to

• The main purpose of the fifth paragraph (lines 45-56) is to

Which sentence is written in the most formal way?

• Went to Barcelona for the weekend. Lots to tell you.

• She’s decided to accept the job.

• Might I suggest you try this new model?

• The girl I met in Singapore was interested in working in Australia.

“Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily,” he thought. “We sat somewhere over there by a lake and I begged her to marry me all through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circling round us: how clearly I see the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly; for some reason I thought that if it settled there, on that leaf, she would say ‘Yes’ at once. But the dragonfly went round and round: it never settled anywhere — of course not, happily not, or I shouldn’t be walking here with Eleanor and the children.”

In this passage, the speaker’s attitude may best be characterized as

• mocking

• confused

• nostalgic

• argumentative

Which of the following conveys a rational tone?

• Concerned

• Critical

• Sarcastic

• Curious

Tone = how

Attitude = what

• True

• False

Choose the correct statement

• Authors of SAT passages are often indifferent to the topics they discuss

• Tone and attitude of the passage are not related to diction

• Tone does not have any relation to the purpose of the purpose

• Authors of SAT passages always care about the topics they discuss

Neutral tone = indifferent attitude

• True

• False