Identify the mood created by a short passage or poem.
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Practise it now
Highlight only the sentences that show this is true. Then show the examiner.
This exercise practises identify textual mood alongside its own main skill, Inference & Evidence.
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A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
The feeling a description leaves behind
Read the passage, then choose the mood it creates.
The corridor smelled of wet coats. Somewhere above, a pipe knocked twice and then stopped. Ravi counted the doors as he passed them, and every one was shut. At the far end the strip light buzzed, went out, and came back on.
Tense
Cheerful
Peaceful
Comic
Answer: Tense
How you get there
Mood is the feeling the writing gives a reader, and it is built out of small choices rather than announced. Every door is shut. The sounds are sudden and unexplained: a pipe that knocks twice, a light that buzzes and flickers. Ravi is counting, which is what people do when they are uneasy. Nothing frightening actually happens, and the mood is still tense, because every detail is waiting for something.
Why the other answers tempt
"Peaceful" tempts because the corridor is quiet and empty, and quiet usually means calm. Here the quiet keeps being broken by noises with no cause, which unsettles a reader rather than settling them.
If they are stuck, say this
Say how the passage makes you feel in one word, then go back and find three details that put that feeling there. If you cannot find three, try a different word.
Highlight only the sentences that show this is true. Then show the examiner.
This engine’s own main skill is Inference & Evidence. It practises identify textual mood alongside it.
Evidence is not "the bit that mentions it" - it is the bit that could not be true unless the statement were true. Maya turning at the fork without checking the signpost, and warning the others about a loose step she has never been shown, both need her to have been here before. The other sentences fit the scene beautifully, but a first-time visitor could have produced every one of them.
What to say if they get stuck
A sentence is only evidence if the statement would fall apart without it.
Some sentences are about the lighthouse, or about the weather. Being on the same topic is not the same as being proof.
Look for things Maya does that she could only do if she already knew the path.
The 11+ does not test these skills in isolation, and practising one in the wrong order wastes the practice. These are the skills the curriculum map connects this one to.
Recognition of figurative choices can support, but does not determine, mood analysis.
How identify textual mood differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises several skills, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: identify the mood created by a short passage or poem, and it stops where excludes naming the writer viewpoint.
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Identify the mood created by a short passage or poem. It is one of 41 named English skills in the 11+, in the reading strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
The skill map puts interpret a word in context first. Mood judgements depend on contextual language meaning. If identify textual mood keeps going wrong, that is the thing to check before doing more of this one.
"Peaceful" tempts because the corridor is quiet and empty, and quiet usually means calm. Here the quiet keeps being broken by noises with no cause, which unsettles a reader rather than settling them. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Say how the passage makes you feel in one word, then go back and find three details that put that feeling there. If you cannot find three, try a different word.
The skill map draws the line here: Excludes naming the writer viewpoint. A question past that line is testing a different named English skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The skill map connects it to identify figurative language. Recognition of figurative choices can support, but does not determine, mood analysis. That skill has its own page here.
Use Comprehension X-Ray, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to identify textual mood, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Identify textual mood rests on something else being secure first
This skill depends on interpret a word in context. A free diagnostic checks those alongside every other english skill, so you find out whether the problem is here or underneath it.
