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Reading Comprehension

Author's Purpose — ISEE Upper practice questions

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Practice 87 Author's Purpose questions in the app

What this topic is

Author's Purpose questions ask why a writer included something, not what it says.

The answer is usually a verb phrase, such as to introduce a puzzle, to contrast two views, to illustrate a claim with an example, or to show a change in thinking. A question may point to a single word or phrase in a specific line and ask why the author used it; often the reason is to set up a surprise or problem that the rest of the passage resolves.

Distractors tend to describe the content correctly but assign the wrong job. Asking what would be lost if the line were removed helps identify its purpose.

Sample questions

Pick an answer to see whether it is right — nothing is saved, and nothing needs an account.

1
Elias climbed to the station roof after
2
the night storm and lifted the two rain
3
gauges from their brackets. The results
4
looked impossible: the sheltered cylinder,
5
set behind a low wall, held only a thin
6
film of water. The exposed gauge on the
7
open corner held an unusually high
8
but measurable amount. Neither total
9
matched the electronic record that ticked
10
on the indoor console.
11
He first blamed the wind, which often
12
drove rain past the sheltered rim and
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into the open cylinder. Then he sat at
14
the bench and lined up the timestamps
15
in the logbook with the console printout.
16
The exposed gauge’s paper label still
17
showed yesterday’s reading, written in
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his own hand before dusk. No one had
19
emptied that cylinder before the new
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rain began, so two storms had been
21
combined in one glass. The sheltered
22
gauge, by contrast, had been reset at
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dusk and had started the night empty.
24
Once the earlier water was subtracted
25
from the exposed total, the three records
26
agreed within the limits of the instruments.
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Elias drew a narrow line through the
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combined figure, wrote the corrected value
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beside it, and added an initial box next
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to every collection time so the next
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reset would leave a name as well as a
32
number.
33
Two clear cylinders had told different
34
stories about one storm. The instruments
35
had worked; the routine had not. Elias
36
copied the corrected chart and carried
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it downstairs to the younger observers
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who shared the night watch. He spread
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the pages on the table without claiming
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that careful reading afterward would
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have been enough.
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Together they assigned one person to
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empty each gauge, one to read it, and
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both to initial the entry before leaving
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the roof. The extra marks took only
46
seconds, but they made the sequence
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visible enough to check against the
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clock on the wall.
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At the next storm, the readings differed
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again. This time the signed log showed
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both cylinders had begun empty. Wind had
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kept some rain from the sheltered gauge,
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just as Elias had first suspected. He
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could examine exposure without doubting
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the procedure. He circled both totals,
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noted the wind direction beside them,
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and left the difference intact for the
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monthly review, when the station compared
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the manual cylinders with the electronic
60
trace and asked which disagreements
61
still needed an explanation.

Question 1Mid

Why does the author initially describe the two gauge results as “impossible” (line 4)?

Show answer

Answer: C — to frame a puzzle whose readings become intelligible once their starting conditions are compared.

The apparent contradiction opens the story’s puzzle, which Elias resolves by discovering that the gauges did not begin the storm with comparable contents.

Every question is picked for where you are right now, wrong answers come back until they stick, and it all works offline.

Practice 87 Author's Purpose questions in the app

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