Author Main Goal/Purpose | English for ACT PDF Download

Understanding a reading passage’s purpose, or main idea, means you must understand the overarching topic a reading passage is trying to convey. Author's main goal or purpose questions are all presented in the same way. These questions require you to understand the main idea of the passage. To answer them, you first have to determine if the main idea matches the intended main idea that's presented in the question. Then, you have to determine why the passage fulfills the author's intended purpose or why it doesn't.

Strategy for Answering Author's Main Goal/Purpose Questions

1. Determine the Main Idea

So, how do you determine the main idea? Well, you should not reread the entire passage. Doing so will take way too much time, and it isn't necessary.

• Look at the Title
• The title often gives an indication about the scope or focus of the passage, allowing you to more easily determine the main idea. 
• If the Title Doesn't Give You the Main Idea, Reread the First Few Sentences of the Passage

2. Use the Title and the First Couple of Sentences to Determine the Main Idea

• At this point we know the main idea and can use that information to answer the question. Identifying the main idea enables you to very quickly answer the first part of the question.

3. Answer "Yes" or "No" First

• After correctly answering the first part of the question, you have at least a 50% chance of getting the question right.

4. Eliminate the Two "Yes" or "No" Answers

• All we have to do is determine why the passage doesn't fulfill the author's intended goal.

5. Provide Your Own Reason for "Yes" or "No"

• Now that we have a reason, we can select the answer to the question.

6. Pick the Answer Choice that Most Closely Matches Your Own Reasoning

• This whole process should take less than a minute, and these main idea questions typically take longer to answer than the sentence/paragraph reference questions in ACT English.

Tips for Purpose Questions

1. Read the entire passage before trying to answer any question on any passage. By looking at the questions beforehand, you may not understand the overarching ideas in a passage.
2. Take notes in your test booklet. When you’re taking notes, whether it’s underlining or annotating, you’re being an active reader. Make sure you mark off sections of the text that discuss the purpose.
3. Remember to note if the author brings up items that contradict the passage’s original assertions. Does the author do this to make the argument more complicated? Or does the author do this to refute an opposing viewpoint?
4. Read each and every answer choice before selecting your final answer. Sometimes these questions can be complicated and A, no matter how great it may sound, might not be as good of a choice as D.

Practice Question

Early in the morning of May 7, 1869, an employee of the Union Pacific Company in Promontory Summit, Utah, received news that suggested at least a day’s delay for an important company event. According to the telegram, a powerful thunderstorm was approaching that promised to disrupt and interfere with the golden spike ceremony celebrating the First Transcontinental Railroad connecting the American East Coast to California.
Despite the threat of storms, that afternoon onlookers applauded as the final golden spike was placed over the last railroad tie. Almost forty years of planning and construction had come to an end, and a railroad now connected New York to San Francisco.
Suppose that the writer’s initial purpose was to write a brief essay describing the entire process of planning and constructing the First Transcontinental Railroad. Would this essay successfully fulfill that purpose?
(a) Yes, because it offers important details including the path that the railroad took from Nebraska to northern California.
(b) Yes, because it carefully describes each significant step in the planning and construction of the railroad.
(c) No, because its primary focus is not on the entire process of building the railroad, but on one moment in its construction.
(d) No, because it is mostly a study of difficulties in the initial stages of creating the railroad.
Ans: What was the purpose of the passage? It’s important to look at the different events discussed in it. Does it cover an entire history of building the transcontinental railroad? Actually, the passage covers the ceremony commemorating the completion of the railroad. So, A and B aren’t correct because there are not many details or careful descriptions about the building process. C looks right, since the focus, as we decided above, was on one event. Still, we have to make sure D isn’t a better answer. But, since the passage doesn’t touch upon any difficulties at the project’s inception, we now know the answer’s C.