4.1: Introduction to the Cause and Effect Essay
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Many college assignments ask students to look at the causal relationships between events. Students need to explain the reasons behind an event (the causes) or the results of the event (the effects). The following are sample writing prompts from various academic disciplines that require cause-effect development.
· History: How were Native Americans on the Atlantic Coast of North America affected by the arrival of the first Europeans?
· Psychology: What factors are behind the increase in teen suicide?
· Environmental Science: What are some of the long-term environmental effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Louisiana coastal communities?
· Health: What are the effects of too much screen time on small children?
· Education: What reasons are behind the increase in lower ACT scores over the last few decades?
- Cause & Effect essays look at reasons for an event and/or the outcomes of an event. You will look at a situation and describe its causes (how the situation came about) or its effects (the situations that resulted from the event).
- Effects can be short-term or long-term. You might need to focus your essay on one or the other or both.
- Sometimes cause-effect essays describe a chain of linked events in which one effect becomes the cause of a subsequent effect which then becomes its own cause.
- Cause and effect relationships need to be clearly and directly stated using specific vocabulary and structures. There is likely to be confusion if you expect the reader to make the connections.
Objectives: By the end of this unit, you will be able to
- Identify cause and effect relationships in model essays.
- Construct clearly formulated thesis statements that show cause and effect relationships.
- Use the writing process to complete and revise a five-paragraph practice cause and effect essay.
- Combine simple sentences to create sentences expressing cause and effect relationships.
- Produce complete sentences with correct subject-verb agreement.
Attributions:
Content on this page was adapted from ESL Academic Writing(opens in new window), which was shared under a CC BY (opens in new window)license by Prince George's Community College.