Millie's ESL Lab: Author's Purpose Practice

Author’s Purpose Practice

Directions: Read the descriptions of each item and determine the author’s purpose in writing it (to entertain, persuade, or inform). Then, in a sentence or two, explain your answer.

1. A pamphlet urging people not to eat animals or use products made from animals or animal suffering because the author thinks that is cruel and unnecessary

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

2. A book of over 1,000 knock-knock jokes

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

3. A cook book containing recipes for making cakes, cookies, and other desserts.

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

4. The story of a young woman who, after the death of her grandfather, quit her job in the business world and returned home to help her aging grandmother

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

5. A politician’s speech about how health insurance should be provided to all families

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

6. A poem about a “packrat,” a person who refuses to throw things away, even things that most people would consider garbage

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

7. An article comparing and contrasting American and European health care systems

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

8. The Shakespeare tragedy Romeo and Juliet, where two young lovers are forbidden from seeing one another due to a centuries old blood feud between their two families

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

9. A young girl’s note to her parents giving reasons why they should buy a puppy.

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

10. The horoscope section in a magazine predicting how things may happen for people based on the month in which they were born.

Author’s Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Explain Your Answer:

^{Write
a sentence or two.}

Directions: read the description, determine the author’s purpose, and then explain your answer.

1. The first issue of Wolverine, published by Marvel in 1982

Author’s Purpose: _____________________________________________________________

^{(to inform,
persuade, or entertain)}