Lessons · Verbal Reasoning
CLT Verbal Reasoning · Lesson
Tone and attitude
Tone questions ask how the author feels about the subject: admiring, skeptical, ironic, urgent, detached. Old prose often uses irony, saying one thing to mean another.
- Underline words that carry feeling: praise, blame, surprise, mockery.
- Decide whether the author is positive, negative or neutral before you look at the choices.
- Then pick the strength: most authors on the test are measured, not furious or ecstatic.
- Choices with two words ("admiring but cautious") must be right in both halves.
Q. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." The tone is...
Answer ironic.
The "truth" is really the wish of families with daughters. The grand phrasing is a joke at their expense.
- Extreme words ("contemptuous," "outraged," "worshipful") are rarely right.
- "Indifferent" or "apathetic" are almost never right: authors do not write passages about things they do not care about.
Every practice question comes with a full explanation, including why each wrong choice is wrong. Free, with no account.