The author's attitude concerning the history of ancient textile production can most accurately be described as

on November 17, 2019

Tone in passages

I have a lot of trouble finding tone in passages, is there any tricks that help?

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Annie on November 17, 2019

Hi @mamie,

Tone questions can be tricky. I like to approach these questions by first reading the full passage and, before turning to the answer choices, thinking to myself what sort of tone was the author speaking in. At this point you will likely only have a generic idea- for instance, was it a neutral evaluation or an enthusiastic endorsement? Once you have this in your head, you can then go through the answer choices. With just this basic idea of the tone in your head, you should be able to eliminate one or two answer choices fairly quickly.

For this passage, the tone seemed pretty level headed, as if the speaker was just walking us through the current state of textile research. It also seemed a bit encouraging about where this research is headed as it talks about how it has improved.

So, turning to the answer choices:

(A) is incorrect. As discussed above, the tone of the passage was not skeptical, but rather a level-headed description. Additionally, the passage does not talk about new hypotheses.

(B) is incorrect. Again, the tone was not doubtful and the passage did not focus on certain evidence being available.

(C) is incorrect. The tone seemed more enthusiastic then impatient.

(D) is incorrect. While the tone seemed a bit optimistic, the rest of this sentence is not accurate. There is no discussion of attracting additional researchers.

(E) is correct. The author provides a even analysis of the situation and is optimistic about the future. Satisfied by the progress is another way to say this.