SAT Reading Passages: Answering Tone and Attitude Questions

Welcome to the second installment of our series about the seven types of questions you’ll encounter on the reading sections of the test. Today we’re looking at tone and attitude questions.

Unlike main idea questions, which ask you to figure out the passage’s primary purpose, tone and attitude questions deal with the author’s view on the subject. These questions are typically phrased as “What is the author’s tone?” or “The author’s attitude toward the subject can best be described as…” Here's a strategy to use when you encounter them:

1. Figure out if the author is positive, negative, or neutral toward the subject. As you read the passage, look for descriptive words that give away the author’s attitude (you might even want to underline these words as you read). In a literary analysis passage, if the play being discussed is referred to as “witty and ground-breaking,” you know the author feels positively about the subject. If it’s described as “dull and derivative,” then the author’s attitude is negative. If the passage is devoid of words casting judgment, but simply sticks to the facts of when the play was produced and how it was perceived by the public, then the author’s tone is neutral.

2. Eliminate answers that disagree with your assessment. Each of the answer choices will convey some kind of feeling; for example, let’s say your choices are a) amazed, b) admiring, c) skeptical, d) bemused, e) angry. If you have decided the author has a positive attitude toward the play, you can eliminate c, d, and e.

3. Be skeptical about answer choices with strong emotional connotations. There are usually a couple of answer choices that differ only slightly; finding the correct answer among them can be hard. To find the right answer, you'll need to determine the intensity of the emotion being conveyed in the passage. In the example above, “amazed” is the more emotional word than “admiring.” If, like many reading passages, the passage is filled with academic language and technical terms, you would hardly consider it a piece of emotional writing. In this case, you would eliminate the answers that express stronger feeling and go with “admiring.”

Next time, we’ll talk about strategies for correctly answering questions that ask you for specific information from the passage.

How do you feel about the reading passages? Let us know your questions below or via email at testpreptutor@sparknotes.com.

Related Post: Answering Main Idea Questions