How to Identify Author's Purpose in a Passage
Teach Reading Strategies to Understand Author's Viewpoint
Oct 17, 2009
While many students can successfully answer specific detail questions about a given reading passage, most students struggle with comprehending the big picture of a text. However, students must prepare to answer all types of multiple choice questions for standardized tests. In addition to understanding the main idea, students must determine the author's purpose to truly understand what they are reading.
Understand Author's Purpose in Non-fiction Passages
To help students prepare for standardized multiple-choice tests, teachers should expose students to a variety of non-fiction texts. These include histories, biographies, newspaper and magazine articles as well how-to instructions. This exposure will help students become more flexible readers and should also encourage them to see information from the writer's point of view. Rarely will the author's purpose be stated directly in the text.
When reading non-fiction, students can ask themselves the following questions to help identify the author's purpose.
- Is the author trying to teach me something?
- Is the author a reliable source of information?
- Is the author trying to persuade me?
- Is the author providing solely factual information?
- Might the author have a hidden agenda?
Ultimately, these questions will help students determine the purpose of a specific text. When writing nonfiction texts, authors commonly try to inform, educate, persuade, convince, or defend. Knowing these common perspectives will help students read texts more critically.
Apply Author's Purpose in Non-fiction Passages
While reading a passage, students can look for clues to determine author's purpose. Teachers can instruct students to carefully analyze word choice, transitions, and sentence structure to help them answer the above questions and, ultimately, determine the author's purpose for writing a particular text. To do so, students will need to make inferences and read in between the lines.
For example, if the writer uses a variety of negatively connoted words such as detest, unimpressive, desist, questionable or scathing, he may be trying to convince the reader to negatively view the subject. Conversely, if the writer cites reliable resources, incorporates direct quotes, and uses factual words and phrases including one research study revealed, was stated, or the final step is, chances are he is trying to inform readers rather than persuade them.
Consider Author's Purpose in Fiction Passages
Most often, the purpose of fiction is to entertain the reader. Sometimes, however, the author uses fiction to make a political statement, such as "A Modest Proposal," a satire by Jonathan Swift. Other times, the author wants to persuade readers to take action or contribute to a specific cause. In poetry, an author's purpose is to most likely elicit a specific feeling in the reader, such as sympathy, joy or love. Poets and fiction writers alike often attempt to create a specific mood in their writing which may include humor, suspense, suffering, or curiosity.
Identifying author's purpose is an important reading strategy. Whether students are reading fiction or non-fiction texts, it is important they learn to efficiently identify the author's purpose. This will help students improve reading comprehension, develop more discerning judgment, and encourage a critical eye. Further, they are less likely to accept a writer's perspective without first deeply considering the issues discussed. Students should not accept being mere consumers of text but, rather, interpreters of information.
Swift, Jonathan. "A Modest Proposal." 1729.
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