The document discusses a congressional hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Indian, Insular & Alaska Native Affairs to discuss establishing a federal fiscal control board for Puerto Rico. The author argues that Congress has dragged its feet for too long in addressing Puerto Rico's fiscal and economic crisis, holding seven hearings since 2015 but taking no meaningful action. While Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi hopes Congress will pass a bill to help, the author is skeptical this will happen given it is an election year and the crisis does not impact most congressional members' constituents. The article criticizes the lack of urgency from Congress to find a solution to Puerto Rico's debt crisis.

1. Author’s
Purpose
and
Position

2. What are our learning goals?
 To understand and
identify the different
purposes of texts.
 To review the
distinction between
non-fiction and
fiction.
 To understand how
the author’s position
affects the text.

3. What is author’s purpose?
 Did you know that
everything you read
has a purpose?
 When an author
writes something
(book, magazine,
textbook, newspaper
article), he/she
chooses his/her words
for a purpose.

4. What is the purpose?
 The author’s purpose
is the main reason
that he/she has for
writing the selection.
 The author’s purpose
will be to:
 Entertain
 Inform
 Persuade
E.g., Edgar Allan Poe, the “father of the detective story” wrote
with the purpose of entertaining.

5. What is the author’s position?
 When an author writes
to persuade (or
sometimes even to
entertain or inform)
he/she will have
his/her own position on
the subject.
 The author’s position is
an author’s opinion
about the subject.
Lewis Carroll’s Self Photo

6. How do the author’s purpose &
author’s position go together?
 Author’s purpose and
position go together.
 The author will want you
to see the topic from
his/her point of view or
through his/her eyes. This
is the author’s position.
 For some issues, you will
be able to tell if the
author is FOR or AGAINST
something.
Famous writer/director M. Night Shyamalan

7. I know the purpose!
 When you are able
to recognize the
author’s purpose,
you will have a
better understanding
of the selection.
 Also, the purpose will
determine how you
read a selection.

8. Can a selection have two purposes?
 Some selections will
have two purposes.
 For example, if the
article is about
eating healthy, it will
try to persuade you
to eat your
vegetables as well
as, inform you about
the different types of
food groups.

9. Author’s Purpose: Inform
 If the author’s purpose is to
inform, you will learn
something from the
selection.
 Information pieces
sometime use one or more
of the following:
 Facts
 Details/Instructions
 Places
 Events
 People

10. Author’s Purpose: Persuade
 If the author’s purpose is to
persuade, the author will want
you to believe his/her position.
 Persuasive pieces are usually
non-fiction, biased, and
based on opinion.
 Although there may be facts,
it contains the author’s
opinions.
 With persuasive pieces, the
author’s will make his/her
position clear (whether
he/she is FOR or AGAINST it).

11. Author’s Purpose: Entertain
 If the author’s purpose is
to entertain, one goal
may be to tell a story or
to describe characters,
places or events (real or
imaginary).
 Examples of
entertaining texts
include: scripts, poems,
stories, jokes, or even
comic strips.

12. Author’s Purpose Quiz
 Read the following passages
and answer the questions that
follow.
Example: What is Lewis Carroll’s
purpose by writing the novel
Through the Looking-Glass?
Well, duh - to entertain!
All fiction is written for that
purpose!

13. Determine the author’s purpose
 Use the information on
the bottle to
determine the
author’s purpose.
 A. To Inform
 B. To Entertain
 C. To Persuade

14. Can you identify the author’s
purpose?
 The correct answer
is A, to inform.
 The label
contained
information and
instructions on how
to use the
medicine.

15. Can you identify the author’s
purpose?
 “His face appeared in the window. She
knew he had been the cause of her
waking at 3 a.m. Was she seeing things?
Was his face real? She tried to lie still and
decide what to do. Just then, the window
shattered. She flew across the room to
the hallway and straight into her mother’s
room.”
Inform
Entertain
Persuade

16. Can you identify the author’s
purpose?
 The correct answer is
to entertain.
 The author tried to
capture a
suspenseful mood in
the story.
 The story is probably
fiction. Well …
maybe.

17. Can you identify
the author’s purpose?
 “It is recommended that parents read to their children
everyday, starting as early as six months of age. When
you read with your children, you are starting them off
in life as a life-long reader and learner. It is never too
late to pick up a book and read; people in their
eighties have learned how to read and discovered
the pleasure of reading. Turn off the television and
read a book!”

18. You can tell the author wrote
this passage to
 A. Inform
 B. Entertain
 C.
Persuade

19. Can you identify the author’s
purpose?
 The correct answer
is C, to persuade.
 This is an emotional
appeal to do the
right thing: READ!
 Also, the last
sentence tells you
encourages you to
do something: “Turn
off the television”

20. Identify the Author’s Purpose
“Film writer and director M.
Night Shyamalan gained
international recognition
when he wrote and
directed 1999's The Sixth
Sense which was
nominated for six Academy
Awards including Best
Picture, Best Director, and
Best Original Screenplay.
(That’s the award for script
writing!) His 2002 film Signs,
in which he also acted,
gained both critical and
financial success.”

21. The author’s purpose was to
 A. Inform
 B. Entertain
 C. Persuade
… to inform the reader about M. Night’s filmography.

22. What are the steps to determining the
author’s purpose and author’s position?
1. Read the
selection
carefully.
2. Determine if
the selection
is fiction or
nonfiction.

23. What is Fiction again?
 A fiction piece is from the author’s imagination and is not based
on facts.
 Fiction pieces can be novels, short stories, scripts, etc.

The purpose of fiction is to entertainthe reader.

24. What is Non-fiction?
 Non-fiction pieces are based on facts and author’s
opinions about a subject.
 Non-fiction pieces could be biographies, articles from
textbooks, newspaper and magazine articles.
 The purpose of non-fiction writing is to inform and
sometimes to persuade.

25. What was the purpose of this
PowerPoint review?
 To persuade?
 To entertain?
 To inform? To inform!
(And to entertain
just a little.)

26. Not Really “the End”
… Mwahahaha
Hopefully you have been
informed by this review and
found yourself somewhat
entertained as well…not to
mention persuaded to look
deep to find just what the
author is trying to do.

27. How to analyze an editorial
or controversial article
 Scan the article.
 Do you believe what is written in the
article? Pull out the main arguments
made by the writer, and quotes, statistics
and facts
 Identify clearly what the controversy is
about briefly mentioning both pro and
con.
 What issue(s) is (are) addressed?

28. How to analyze an editorial
or controversial article
 What is the main argument and/or
conclusion?
 • What evidence is put forward to
support the argument(s) and/or
conclusion(s)?
 • What are the differing points of views
related to the issue?
 • What side of the issue is not
represented?
 • Why is it difficult to resolve this issue?

29. How to analyze an editorial
or controversial article
 State the controversial topic ( pro
versus con)
 Summarize the article using standard
journalists' questions (NOTES ONLY)
-What, Why, Where, When, How

30. Summarize the article
A -ARGUMENT/THESIS
1. EVIDENCE (proof: facts, statistics)
B -ARGUMENT/THESIS
1. EVIDENCE (proof: facts, statistics)
C - ARGUMENTS/THESIS
1. EVIDENCE (proof: facts, statistics)

31. CONCLUSION
 This article is PRO...NEUTRAL...CON (circle
one)
 Did the writer leave out important
information? If so, what?

32. PUERTO RICO IN THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN
By Philipe Schoene Roura on February 4, 2016
 “Just when I thought I was
out, they pull me back in,”
the famous line by Al Pacino
in the role of Michael
Corleone of the Godfather
trilogy would have been a
fitting statement for U.S. Rep.
Don Young (R-Alaska), as he
kicked off a hearing by the
House Subcommittee on
Indian, Insular & Alaska
Native Affairs on Tuesday
about establishing a federal
fiscal control board for
Puerto Rico.
 Young was at the center of Puerto
Rico’s status debate in 1998 when
then-Gov. Pedro Rosselló was
determined to hold a federally
mandated status plebiscite, which
passed by one vote in the U.S.
House of Representatives, but fell
short in the U.S. Senate. The
Rosselló administration
aggressively lobbied Congress, but
managed only to obtain a
perfunctory resolution supporting
Puerto Rico’s right to host
nonbinding advisory referendums.
It was a Steve Harvey moment
—“I’m sorry, but the winner really
is….”

33. PUERTO RICO IN THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN
 Now Young is back in the Puerto Rico
maelstrom, attempting to ascertain
whether the island deserves to handle its
own affairs or needs oversight imposed
from afar. At this writing, Caribbean
Business learned that the hearings’
witnesses included Anthony Williams, the
former mayor of Washington, D.C., who
was the city’s CFO when Congress
established a fiscal control board for
D.C. in the late 1990s; Carlos García,
former Government Development Bank
president during the Luis Fortuño
administration; Simon Johnson, an
economics professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
and attorney Thomas Moers, partner at
New York-based Kramer Levin, which
represents two bondholder groups
challenging the Debt Compliance &
Recovery Act. Puerto Rico’s locally
enacted bankruptcy law is before the
U.S. Supreme Court, which will hold a
hearing this spring on the enforceability
of the law.
 If the Supremes decide on Puerto
Rico’s behalf that the law is
enforceable, it would provide the
island with access to orderly debt
restructuring for much of its $70
billion debt. In truth, a decision
favoring the so-called criollo
bankruptcy code would prompt a
huge sigh of relief in the
Republican House majority
because there is an immovable
fundamentalist faction in the lower
chamber that would rather have
us shouldering the burden than
grant Puerto Rico relief. Just ask
their constituents in Arkansas,
Mississippi and Alabama.

34. PUERTO RICO IN THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN
 The latest congressional
hearing on the need to
establish “a Puerto Rico
Financial Stability and
Economic Growth Authority,”
marks the seventh time since
2015 that a congressional
committee has publicly
discussed issues related to
the island’s fiscal and
economic crisis. This is epic
foot dragging in a body
prone to moving at a glacial
pace.
 Resident Commissioner Pedro
Pierluisi is hopeful that Congress
will file a measure to address
Puerto Rico’s fiscal and
economic woes following the
Feb. 2 hearing. The island’s
nonvoting member of Congress is
adamant that federal oversight
must be paired with access to a
debt-restructuring regime. And
Santa Claus lives in Plaza Las
Américas. I am willing to bet that
Puerto Rico will not receive a
path to orderly relief in Congress
—not during an election year and
not in the House.

35. PUERTO RICO IN THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN
 By the time this newspaper prints, Young will have chaired the
hearings and members of Congress will be back on the campaign
trail. With the exception of those who represent constituents in
Hispanic American electoral bastions, few seeking re-election will
focus on Puerto Rico’s woes. In the face of that reality, what is the
likelihood that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will find a
“responsible solution” to Puerto Rico’s crisis by the end of March?
http://cb.pr/puerto-rico-in-the-spotlight-again/