authorspurpose

=**What are Author's Purpose Questions?**=

So it's test time **//again//** and you've gotten to your favorite part - reading passages and answering multiple choice questions. The first few question are easy - the answers come right from the reading. Even the inferencing questions aren't that bad. But then you get to the last question, which asks, "Which of the following was the author's //**purpose in writing this**//?" Unfortunately, "To torture students," is not one of the answer choices.

Author's Purpose Questions are questions that ask you to figure out why the author wrote the text. Possible reasons include: to i**nform or teach** someone about something, to **entertain** people, or to **persuade or convince** their audience to do or not do something.


 * Quick Quiz**: What was my purpose in writing this?
 * Answer:** Hopefully, you figured out that I was trying to inform you about Author's Purpose Questions.

Let's look at a few more examples :
1.) //Princeton University just announced that it is creating a program that will enable students who've been accepted to volunteer in a foreign country for a year before they begin as freshmen. This is a great program because it allows students to develop their understanding of the world and to gain a global perspective of the United States. This will hopefully help students to choose more diverse majors, and it may also drive classroom discussion in a more global direction. This program also gives students the opportunity to help others, which could help to increase volunteer activities both on and off campus and create a more pleasant campus atmosphere overall. Princeton's program is a great thing for the university and should be replicated by other colleges and universities around the country.//

2.) //When I first started working in Japan, I knew nothing. I couldn't use chopsticks, had last studied Japan in tenth grade, and could only say "arigato" and "sayonara." One of the first things I was told to do was to present gifts to my superiors at school. This included my supervisor, the two vice principals, and the principal. I arrived at the school during the middle of summer vacation, when many of the teachers report, but none of the students do; it's generally a very relaxed time of year. I was introduced to the principal by one of the English teachers, and I managed to mangle my way through my self-introduction and present him with a small gift, a book about Philadelphia. I was also given a tour of the teachers' room, one office shared by all of the teachers in the school. (In Japan, the students stay in one room all day while the teachers rotate through.) In our teachers' room, the principal had a desk in the front center of the room flanked on either side by desks belonging to the vice principals. With the tour and my first self-introduction complete, I finally had a few hours to sit at my desk and try to take it all in. After lunch at a nearby noodle shop where I embarrassed everyone with my pathetic chopstick skills, we returned to school. As I was sitting at my desk, trying to blend in as much as a white teacher who speaks no Japanese can in a rural Japanese town, a man walked in and took a seat at one of the vice principals' desks. "Aha!" I thought. "Now's my chance to show that I really know what's going on." I grabbed my gift for him, walked to the front of the room, rushed through my self-introduction, and retreated to my seat. When I glanced back at the man, he seemed puzzled, but I chalked it up to his amazement that I could speak any Japanese at all. The next day, however, I was horrified when I walked into the teachers' room and saw the man to whom I had given the gift sitting at the principal's desk and a different man in the vice principal's. It seems that I had not actually paid attention to what the principal looked like and had given him both gifts! I quickly learned my lesson and made sure to pay better attention to those around me.//

Which of these stories is meant to entertain? Which one is supposed to persuade? If you said the first one is persuasive, and the second is entertaining, you got it right! Now it's time to move on to some practice activities...