Cause and Effect

Given a set of data or other information, student must be able to establish a convincing relationship in writing of the cause and effect. For example: When writing your essay, keep the following suggestions in mind: Remember your purpose. Decide if you are writing to inform or persuade. Focus on immediate and direct causes (or effects.) Limit yourself to causes that are close in time and related, as opposed to remote and indirect causes, which occur later and are related indirectly. Strengthen your essay by using supporting evidence. Define terms, offer facts and statistics, or provide examples, anecdotes, or personal observations that support your ideas. Qualify or limit your statements about cause and effect. Unless there is clear evidence that one event is related to another, qualify your statements with phrases such as “It appears that the cause was” or “It seems likely” or “The evidence may indicate” or “Available evidence suggests.” To evaluate the effectiveness of a cause and effect essay, ask the following questions: What are the causes? What are the effects? Which should be emphasized? Are there single or multiple causes? Single or multiple effects? Is a chain reaction involved?

This site, www.delmar.edu/engl/wrtctr/handouts, reminds us that simply seeing cause and effect is not sufficient and suggests the following steps when writing a cause and effect essay: Clearly distinguish between cause and effect Develop your thesis statement Find and organize supporting details Use appropriate transitions

Cause and Effect Paragraphs

In a cause and effect paragraph, causes explain the effect of what is described in the topic sentence. In other words, effects are the main ideas of the paragraph and causes are the supporting details. The chart below shows this relationship. The chart is a graphic explaining a paragraph about the growth of cities.

EFFECT(Topic Sentence)CAUSES(Supporting Sentences)Cities have grown very large. [There are several reasons for this.] Factory jobs attracted people.(Cities have grown very large.) Better schools attracted families to move to the city.(Cities have grown very large.) Places of leisure, entertainment, and culture made city life appear more interesting.

For more examples of how to write cause and affect paragraphs, you will find the following website to be very useful: lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/fwalters/cause.html