ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Main Idea Videos 15 videos
Dogs have the ability to "read" human emotions. For example, dogs have been shown to discriminate between humans who approach in a friendly manner...
Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician and the founder of homeopathy, began as a village doctor and quickly became dissatisfied with how medicine was...
Jefferson Davis was an unusual man. During a long and frequently tragic life, his favorite job, according to his wife Varina, was serving as a U.S....
CAHSEE ELA 5.5 Main Idea and Sources 252 Views
Share It!
Description:
CAHSEE ELA 5.5 Main Idea and Sources. What was the author's purpose in writing this passage?
Transcript
- 00:03
Here's your shmoop du jour... Hit pause and read this passage. You may experience
- 00:08
a bit of déjà vu...
- 00:21
What was the author's purpose in writing this passage?
- 00:24
And here are the potential answers...
- 00:30
So... what is this question asking? Well, it's asking us to peer inside the
Full Transcript
- 00:34
author's head and see if we can get at their reason for writing this little historical nugget.
- 00:39
Was it A... to entertain? Meh. There isn't a lot of plot development,
- 00:44
and there are no thrilling chase sequences... probably not.
- 00:48
What about B... to inform? Certainly sounds plausible. There's a lot
- 00:52
of information here... meaning that we're being informed...
- 00:54
How about C... to persuade? There are certain things the author is trying
- 00:59
to persuade us of... ...such as the idea that the railroad helped
- 01:03
bring people together, or made travel more efficient...
- 01:05
...but it still seems more like the purpose was to inform us than to sway our beliefs.
- 01:11
And D? To argue? Not much argumentation here. Besides, "arguing"
- 01:15
is pretty close to "persuading"... Nope... answer B is our best bet.
- 01:20
As in, "Brain privacy."
Related Videos
CAHSEE 1.1 English Language Arts Passage Drill. Which line is an example of a metaphor?
CAHSEE 1.3 Passage Drill. Which of the following is the best way to express the meaning of the word alumni in this sentence?
CAHSEE 1.2 Passage Drill. Which of these sentences from the story best illustrates the sensitive side of the narrator's nature?
CAHSEE 1.4 Passage Drill. What does the use of flashbacks accomplish in "Graduation"?
CAHSEE 1.5 Passage Drill. In this line from the story, the words buzz and pulsated suggest the crowd is...what?