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Authorial Purpose Analysis

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Authorial Purpose Analysis

Read each extract carefully. Identify the writer’s main purpose and use details from the text to support your ideas. For the final task, choose one purpose and write your own short text.

Purpose and audience

Writers make choices to achieve a purpose and connect with an audience.

1.Complete the definition: A writer’s purpose is the reason they a text.

2.Match each purpose to its best description.

Persuade
Inform
Entertain

Give the reader knowledge or explanations
Engage the reader through a story, humour or imaginative ideas
Encourage the reader to agree, act or change their view

Reading for purpose

For each extract, identify the main purpose. Writers may use several techniques, but consider the overall effect.

3.Extract A: “Our school should open the library for one extra hour after lessons. Many pupils have nowhere quiet to study, and a later closing time would give them a fairer chance to succeed. Ask the school council to support the proposal.” What is the writer’s main purpose?

To persuade readers to support a change
To explain how libraries classify books
To entertain readers with a school story

4.Extract B: “When snow settles on a road, it can hide painted lane markings. Salt lowers the temperature at which water freezes, helping to reduce ice when it is spread before conditions become severe.” What is the writer’s main purpose?

To persuade readers to avoid travelling
To inform readers about snow and road salt
To entertain readers with a comic mishap

5.Extract C: “Ellis tugged the classroom door. It did not move. From inside came a soft, suspicious crunch. Arjun peered through the glass just as a snowball rolled across the floor and stopped neatly beside the teacher’s shoe.” What is the writer’s main purpose?

To entertain with a brief, humorous scene
To give instructions for clearing a classroom
To persuade readers that snow is dangerous

6.Choose one phrase from Extract A and explain how it reveals the writer’s purpose.

7.Complete a purpose statement for Extract B: The writer mainly wants readers to…

8.Select every feature that could commonly support a persuasive text.

A direct appeal to the reader
A call to take action
A sequence of events told mainly for amusement
A rhetorical question
Emotive language

9.Select every feature that could commonly support an informative text.

Accurate figures or dates
Technical vocabulary explained for the audience
A clear, factual tone
An unexpected joke as the main focus
Explanations of how or why something happens

10.Select every feature that could commonly support an entertaining text.

Sensory description
Character development
Suspense
A list of measurements presented without a story
Humour

Try it yourself

Choose one purpose and write a short text about school uniform. Make your purpose clear through your language choices.

11.Write 100–150 words about school uniform to persuade, inform or entertain. State your chosen purpose, then use suitable language features to achieve it.

12.In your own words, explain one reason why recognising a writer’s purpose can help a reader.

13.In your own words, explain one way that deciding on a purpose before writing can help a writer.