An Exercise for Learning Tone

An Exercise for Learning Tone (courtesy of Jane Schaffer)

3 variations:

1.    This passage has ____ and _____ tones.       Example from prison door scene for Scarlet Letter:             …foreboding and optimistic tones

2.    This passage has tones of ____ and _____.       Example from the funeral passage awhile back:       …tones of condescension and amusement.

3.    This passage has a tone of _____ _____.       Example from the G B Shaw passage about his mother’s cremation:       ….tone of joyous remorse.  This tone sentence came from one of my students’ actual AP exam that year when she earned a 5. Most students prefer the two-adjective syntax of #1; a few choose the noun-noun sequence of #2; and a very few choose the adjective/noun sequence of #3.