Question

Read the excerpts from “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry” and “Speaking Arabic.”

Answer 1

Answer: B) Anaya structures his text as an explanation, which gives it an authoritative tone, while Nye structures her text as an impression, which gives it a soothing tone.

Explanation: The tone of a text or sentence is the author's or speaker's attitude towards the audience, the subject or even the characters of the text. There are many different kinds of tones, like: positive, negative, objective, sad, angry, etc. In the first excerpt we can see an example of an authoritative tone ("he took the tortillas out of his poetry, which is to say he took the soul out of his poetry") and in the second one we can see an example of a soothing tone ("I overheard a young man say to his friend, “I wish I had a heritage. Sometimes I feel—so lonely for one").

Answer 2

The correct answer is "Anaya structures his text as an explanation, which gives it an authoritative tone, while Nye structures her text as an impression, which gives it a soothing tone".

We can recognize the tone of any given piece of writing, by analysing the attitude with which the author chooses to deliver their message to an audience.

In the first excerpt, the speaker structures their message with an authoritative tone: they start by presenting a situation with a particular argument at hand, and end up delivering a conclusion in the form of an explanation "In other words he took the tortillas out of his poetry, which is to say he took the soul out of his poetry".

In the second excerpt, the content is lighter and comes in the form of an anecdotal observation and some description of a certain event they're recalling, which gives the text a soothing tone.

Hope this helps!