My Old Kentucky Home / Stephen Collins Foster

Test Practice

Identify Author’s Purpose

With your partner, discuss how to answer this question about the author’s purpose in writing this selection.

1. What emotional effect does Foster create in this song?
a. nostalgia for his boyhood home in Kentucky
b. sympathy for people who had to move from place to place to work
c. pride about living in Kentucky
d. a yearning for the home he never had


What is the correct answer to the question above? How did the information you gathered while reading help you eliminate incorrect answers?

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