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Common Core ELAGrades 9–10Reading: Informational

RI.9-10.6: Point of View, Purpose and Rhetoric

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.6 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 41 Grades 9–10 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 9-10, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.9-10.6 Means in Plain English

Ninth and tenth graders pin down what an author wants readers to believe or do, then analyze the rhetoric that pushes them there: a pointed question, a repeated phrase, an appeal to emotion. An op-ed about vanished stars works on feelings before it ever asks for new streetlights.

Eighth grade (RI.8.6) watched how an author answers conflicting evidence and viewpoints. Ninth and tenth grade look at the whole toolkit of persuasion and what each tool does. Eleventh and twelfth grade (RI.11-12.6) study texts whose rhetoric is especially effective and how style and content give them power.

RI.9-10.6 I Can Statements

  • I can state an author’s purpose as a specific goal.
  • I can name a rhetorical move and explain what it does.
  • I can explain how a concession helps an author persuade.

RI.9-10.6 Worked Example

The op-ed reaches for the reader’s feelings before it makes its request, and the weak answer never notices there is a request.

Read the Story
When did you last see the Milky Way? Not in a photograph, not on a screen, but over your own street?For almost all of human history, every child who looked up could see it. Sailors steered by the stars. Farmers timed their planting by them. Yet a 2016 world atlas of night sky brightness found that nearly 80 percent of North Americans can no longer see the Milky Way from where they live.We did not lose the stars to some natural disaster. We lost them to our own lights: lights that shine sideways and upward, lights that burn all night over empty parking lots, lights that waste the very energy we pay for.I am not asking the city to go dark. Safe streets need light. I am asking it to buy shielded fixtures that point light down, where people walk, instead of up, where no one does.Our grandparents could see the night sky from their front steps. Our grandchildren should be able to, too.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: What is the author’s purpose, and how does the author use rhetoric to advance it?
Not Yet“The author’s purpose is to tell us about light pollution. The author uses a question and a statistic to make it interesting.”It mistakes a persuasive purpose for an informative one: the piece asks the city to buy shielded fixtures. It names two devices but never says how either one moves a reader toward that request.
Meets the Standard“The author wants the city to replace its streetlights with shielded fixtures that point light down. The opening question puts each reader in the story and makes the loss personal before any facts arrive. The 2016 atlas figure then turns that feeling into evidence. The repeated ‘lights that’ piles up examples of waste until the problem sounds both obvious and fixable, and ‘I am not asking the city to go dark’ heads off the safety objection so the request sounds modest. The closing contrast between grandparents and grandchildren makes doing nothing feel like taking something from the future.”It states the purpose precisely, then ties each rhetorical move to what it does for that purpose: a personal appeal, evidence, repetition, a concession and an emotional close.
Question Stems to Use
What does the author want readers, or the city, to do?Why might the author open with a question instead of a fact?What is repeated here, and what does the repetition make you feel?Where does the author answer an objection before a reader can raise it?Which line would you remember tomorrow? Why did the author end there?

Common Mistakes with RI.9-10.6

Calling a persuasive purpose informative

“The author’s purpose is to inform us about light pollution.”

Try this: Ask students what the author wants a reader to do or believe after reading, and require the answer to name a specific action.

Naming devices without their effect

“The author uses repetition, a rhetorical question and a statistic.”

Try this: Pair every device students name with a “so that” clause explaining how it moves the reader toward the author’s purpose.

Missing the concession as rhetoric

Skipping “I am not asking the city to go dark” as a throwaway line

Try this: Have students find the sentence where the author admits a limit and explain which reader that sentence is written to win over.

Where RI.9-10.6 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.8.6Analyze how an author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.
AlongsideSL.9-10.3Weigh a speaker’s point of view, reasoning and use of rhetoric.W.9-10.1Write arguments that develop claims and counterclaims fairly, in a formal style.
Comes NextRI.11-12.6Analyze how style and content make especially effective rhetoric powerful and persuasive.

Practice RI.9-10.6

Quick Check

  1. What is the author’s purpose?
  2. Why does the author write “I am not asking the city to go dark”?
  3. What does the repetition of “lights that” do?

RI.9-10.6: Other Names

RI.9-10.6CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.6

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.