Identify the author's purpose

Our previous step dealt with identifying topic and scope — two concepts tied to the content of the passage. Now, in our second step, we begin to consider the structure of the passage more closely. How is the passage pieced together? How are ideas tied to one another?

The key to understanding the structure of a passage is to first understand the author's purpose — what goal does the author hope to accomplish in writing the passage, and how does his writing help to achieve this goal? It is important to keep the author and the author's purpose in mind at all times. Many students (consciously or not) approach a passage as if it's "Institution-Speak" or "Test-Talk" instead of thinking about it from the point of view of the person who created it.

A passage might begin like so:

The great migration of European intellectuals to the United States in the second quarter of the twentieth century prompted a transmutation in the character of Western social thought.

The topic of this passage is European intellectuals, and the scope is those intellectuals' relocation to the U.S. during the 1926-1950 period. But why has the author written this passage? Why is he interested in that relocation?

Use the excerpt above to predict the author's purpose. Type your response into the textbox below, and then click Continue.