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Common Core ELAGrades 9–10Reading: Literature

RL.9-10.4: How Word Choices Build Tone

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.4 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

Get the Word MapAll 41 Grades 9–10 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).

Common Core State Standards, Grades 9-10, Reading: Literature · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RL.9-10.4 Means in Plain English

Ninth and tenth graders read word choices as a pile-up, not one by one. Work words like peavey and wanigan put a reader on an 1890s river drive, and a narrator’s easy slang sets an informal tone, until his words go flat and the tone turns to grief.

In 8th grade (RL.8.4) students worked out figurative meanings and analogies and how single words set a tone. Grades 9 and 10 add up the shades of many words at once. In grades 11 and 12 (RL.11-12.4) students read Shakespeare’s double meanings and fresh, striking language for its effect.

RL.9-10.4 I Can Statements

  • I can explain the figurative and emotional shades of a word.
  • I can show how many word choices add up to a tone.
  • I can explain how language creates a sense of time and place.

RL.9-10.4 Worked Example

A river driver from the 1890s tells about one spring on the logs, and his word choices do most of the telling.

Read the Story
That spring the river was running high and ugly, and every man on the drive was itching to ride logs down to the mill.We had calked boots, a peavey apiece, and Ma Dufresne’s beans in the wanigan, which is to say we had everything a fellow needs.Then the jam built up at Tessier Bend, a mile of spruce piled high as a church, groaning like something alive.Old Gus walked out on it alone to find the key log. He found it.We did not sing on the way down after that. We rode the logs and kept our eyes on the water.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: How do the narrator’s word choices, taken together, create a sense of time and place, and how does his tone change by the end?
Not Yet“The author uses old words like ‘peavey’ and ‘wanigan’ to show it is a long time ago, and the story is sad at the end.”It lists two words and a mood but never shows how the choices add up, why the tone shifts, or what the short sentence ‘He found it’ is doing.
Meets the Standard“The work words, ‘calked boots,’ ‘a peavey apiece,’ ‘the wanigan,’ put us on a river drive more than a century ago without a single date, and the easy talk around them, ‘itching to ride logs,’ ‘everything a fellow needs,’ gives the tone a young man’s swagger. Then the words get heavier: the jam is ‘high as a church’ and ‘groaning like something alive,’ so the river turns from a playground into a threat. ‘He found it’ is the shortest sentence yet, and it never says Gus died. The flatness says it for him. By ‘We did not sing,’ the swagger is gone, and the plain words carry the grief the narrator won’t name.”It groups word choices by what they build, the setting, the swagger, the threat, and shows the tone moving from one to the next. That pile-up is the cumulative impact the standard asks about.
Question Stems to Use
Which words place this story in a particular time and place?What do the narrator’s casual words tell you about his attitude?Where does the language get heavier, and what changes then?Why might the author choose such a short sentence here?How would the passage feel in formal, textbook words instead?

Common Mistakes with RL.9-10.4

Listing words instead of tracing their effect

“The author uses words like ‘peavey’ and ‘wanigan.’”

Try this: Have students group word choices by what they build, setting, attitude or threat, then write one sentence on each group’s effect.

Naming a tone with one vague word

“The tone is sad.”

Try this: Require two tone words, one for the start and one for the end, and the quoted phrase where the tone turns.

Skipping unfamiliar words

Reads past “wanigan” and “calked” and misses that they place the story in time

Try this: Teach students to guess an unfamiliar term from context, then check it, since period words often carry the setting.

Where RL.9-10.4 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.8.4Determine figurative and connotative meanings, including analogies and allusions, and their effect on tone.
AlongsideL.9-10.5Interpret figures of speech and the nuances in the meanings of words.L.9-10.4Work out unfamiliar words from context, word parts and reference works.
Comes NextRL.11-12.4Analyze words with several meanings and fresh language, including Shakespeare’s.

Practice RL.9-10.4

Vocabulary Worksheet GeneratorFree ToolTurn the setting words from a story into a worksheet students finish before reading, so the period vocabulary doesn’t stall them.Context cluesConnotationGrades 9-10
Make a Worksheet

Quick Check

  1. What gear does the narrator say each man had?
  2. What two things does the narrator compare the log jam to?
  3. What does “He found it” suggest happened to Gus?

RL.9-10.4: Other Names

RL.9-10.4CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.4

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.