Tricks to Find Out The Author’s Attitude In The Text
Sahabat Pintar, Do you know the author’s attitude?
In every comprehension test, there is an author’s attitude towards the text. In reading comprehension tests, you will also encounter questions that ask you to determine the author’s attitude in the text. Reading and understanding the author’s attitude is an important skill in solving test questions such as Reading Comprehension, Critical Reading, or text analysis in English exams or similar. Before getting into the tricks of solving the author’s attitude questions, we must understand what is the author’s attitude? Cekidot…
Definition of The Author’s Attitude
The author’s attitude is the emotion or tone of the author towards the topic. How the writer expresses their writing through the words they choose. However, it will be different from purpose because it only defines the author’s attitude towards a particular subject of writing. It’s not even the author’s true attitude, because they can express other attitudes besides their own.
The author’s attitude reflects their feelings, opinions, and points of view which influence the way readers interpret the content of the text. A new text, an article, a poem, a novel, an essay, a paper, or a research text will produce different emotions because they are described differently. Writers will use different techniques to create the reading they want to convey, but word choice is key. Diction and word choice determine how the text is formed.
Well, how about now? You know what the author’s attitude is. Next, we’ll get into the two characteristics of the author’s attitude towards the text.
Characteristic of the Author’s Attitude
There are two categories of questions relating to the author’s attitude:
- Author’s Opinion
This first category is the author’s opinion. Generally, the most well-known opinions are objective and subjective.
- It is objective, neutral (impartial), mostly factual, and often formal. By not showing feelings for or against a topic.
- Subjective in nature uses words that describe feelings, judgments, or opinions, mostly encompassing experiences, senses, feelings, and thoughts. Generally the result of personal thoughts, biases, emotions, and often informal.
Then the question model will take the following form:
- The writer assumes that …
- Which of the following best reflects the author’s opinion about …?
- The author would most likely agree with …
2. Author’s Tone
The tone in a passage is the sentiment or attitude of the writer towards the subject discussed in the passage. It is dominated by the emotions displayed by the writer. For example; the writer wants to highlight facts about a problem (using a factual tone), explore the pros and cons of an event (using a critical tone), or reveal the causal relationship of an event (using an analytical tone). Some of these reasons are the differences in the tone of the writer in each reading. Then the question model will take the following form:
- The tone of the author is best described as …
- The attitude of the author towards “…” is best described as …
- Which of the following best describes the tone of the passage?
Sahabat Pintar, have you understood about the author’s attitude?
Tricks to Figure Out The Author’s Attitude
Next, let’s get straight into the tricks of finding out the author’s attitude. Check it out…
1. Identify the Writing Style
You can review how writers use writing styles to express their texts, whether using emotional language, logical arguments, rhetoric, or creative writing styles.
2. Identify the main idea
The main idea in the text should also be known to determine the nature and sentiment that will relate to the author’s attitude.
3. Identify the nature and sentiment of writing
You can understand whether the text highlights facts or reflects the author’s opinion. Then you also need to understand the sentiment shown in the text: positive (appreciating something), negative (criticizing something), or neutral (neither).
4. Note the change in attitude throughout the text
Understanding and identifying where the author changes their stance and starts moving in a different direction. It is important to understand these tone changes, and from this understanding, try to deduce the most dominant sentiment in the passage. This can help you understand how the author feels about the topic. Don’t focus on one sentiment, Sahabat Pintar!
5. Elimination of answers
When you have identified the main idea, keywords, and the author’s character sentiment in the reading text. Next, you can determine your answer based on the answer options provided. However, don’t choose one answer, you can eliminate the answers that don’t relate to your identification results.
6. Read the Text More than Once
Reading a text more than once helps you dig deeper and identify elements of the author’s tone that may be missed on the first reading.
7. Practice Questions
This is the key to improving your skills in this material. Try to answer practice questions that require you to identify the author’s attitude. This way will help you develop your intuition in recognizing nuances and authorial intent.
8. Make a list of attitudes expressed
In addition to practice, you also need to make a list of expressed attitudes to facilitate your skills in studying and answering these questions.
Well, those are tricks for solving questions about the author’s attitude. Isn’t it easy, Sahabat Pintar? So, now to ensure your understanding, let’s answer the following example problem below:
Read the following sentence to answer the question
Shakespeare’s works have influenced English Literature for generations to come. He is unparalleled as a writer whose influence stretched far beyond just England, where he was based. He revolutionized how theatre worked in England and consequent theatre traditions in other European countries. Before Shakespeare, playwrights used soliloquies to reveal crucial bits of information related to a character to help move the plot along. Shakespeare changed it to reflect a character’s inner monologue to help understand their minds. Such was his impact that Shakespeare to this day remains the world’s best-selling playwright, with sales of his works exceeding 4 billion copies in the years since his death. He is also among the top 3 most translated authors in History.
Additionally, Shakespeare is regularly considered among the greatest Britons ever. According to Historian and Television presenter Dan Snow, Shakespeare was among the ten most notable Britons in history, especially because of his evergreen plays and his contributions to the development of the English language. In a survey conducted by Heritage Magazine in 1999, Shakespeare was ranked the greatest Briton of all time by viewers, experts, and historians. Similarly, in BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest Britons through a poll conducted in 2002, Shakespeare ranked 5th.
In Shakespeare’s time, English grammar and spelling were not as standardized as they are today. And hence his use of various terms and phrases not only led to the creation of new words and phrases, but he also changed the way a lot of words we use today. Expressions such as waiting “with bated breath” from Merchant of Venice and “a foregone conclusion” from Othello have become commonplace today but were not even considered expressions before Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s influence extended far beyond his native England, he was a poet truly for the world, and his plays remain relevant even in the 21st century, particularly because of the content. His plays are timeless and are just as relevant today as they were in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
(Source of text: https://historycolored.com/articles/9632/william-shakespeare-the-life-of-william-shakespeare/)
The author’s tone in presenting his ideas can be said as …
A. Sympathetic
B. Critical
C. Factual
D. Empathetic
E. Persuasive
Let’s apply the above tricks to answer this question:
- You need to identify the writing style of the text carefully. The writing style you get is facts combined with logical arguments.
2. If done, you can determine the main idea of the text above. We find that the main idea is “The Life of William Shakespeare”.
3. Next, identify its nature and sentiment. This text is objective because it contains facts and does not tend to criticize the text. Then because it is objective, the whole text contains facts.
4. Throughout the text, there were no changes that affected the nature and sentiment
5. Let’s eliminate the answer choices.
- Answer (A) does not reflect sympathy as it discusses Shakespeare’s life and achievements.
- Answer (B) is incorrect because the text does not criticize anything about Shakespeare.
- Answer (D) does not emphasize empathy with Shakespeare.
We get two answers, (C )Factual and (E) Persuasive.
- We need to read the text again to make sure we get the right answer between the two. It is found that answer (E) is not correct because the text does not give an invitation to the reader, instead the text describes more about Shakespeare’s life. So the right answer is © Factual. Based on the text, the author describes Shakespeare and how he can influence the world until the 21st century. Everything described through facts is by Shakespeare’s life information.
So how is the question, Sahabat Pintar? Is it easy to answer questions that are related to the author’s attitude?
Identifying the author’s attitude in a test is an important skill that allows you to answer questions more precisely and effectively. This is because every text will contain a different tone and attitude. By practicing and applying these tricks, you can improve your ability to tackle test questions relating to author attitude with more confidence.
See You Again…
Source of the article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466565/
Editor by Iftihal Muslim Rahman
