I read once that if students misread the tone for literature, they have misread the text. And my AP® Language students were really struggling with both tone in literature and tone in nonfiction. So I had to come up with a plan. And it turns out that limiting the words for tone that they had access to was the perfect plan.
What Does Tone in Literature Mean?
Literary tone is the author’s attitude toward their topic. Which means, tone is really everything when you consider that often the AP® Literature Prompts for both the prose and poetry essays focus on attitude.
The key to discussing the author’s attitude is having the vocabulary to do so. Giving your students a list of words for tone in literature is a great way to start, but they often find these lists to be overwhelming. After watching my student struggle with this list, I decided that the way to go was to limit the words they were dealing with.
Using Stations to Help Student Understand Tone
I created stations in which students focused on shorter sections of text. I gave them five tone words to go with the passage. They had to choose the two words they thought best fit the passage.
Once they picked two (or three, if they were unsure) words they thought fit the tone of the passage, they had to look up the definitions for these words. This is key. It forces them to expand their vocabulary and focus on denotation, connotation and the nuance of the words. From the definitions, they had to choose the one word that best fit the tone of the passage and defend this choice.
This activity for teaching tone worked out to be a great way to get students discussing the texts and the tone. But it had the added benefit of being a good way to also practice multiple choice as well. I specifically chose words where they really had to focus on choosing the best answer over simply the correct answer.
Using Collaborative Annotations to Explore Tone
I love using collaborative annotations to explore tone through close reading. Give students excerpts of around 250 words. Then use pass-a-passage annotations to have students look for words and phrases that indicate the tone. After the passage has gone around to everyone in the group (3-4 is ideal for this activity), have the students discuss the tone of the passage based first on words that come to them. Then have them refer to a list of words for tone in literature to see if they can choose a more precise word to discuss the tone of the text.
Teaching Tone for Literature
Teaching tone can be really challenging, but helping students to focus their examination of text really helps. Let me know if you give these tone stations or tone collaborative annotations a try. I would love to know how they work for you.
Related Resources
Another way to look at tone: Collaborative Annotations for High School English
Examine Tone with 9 Meaningful Poetry Activities for Women’s History Month
