Cause and Effect Essay: Exploring Relationships and Analyzing Outcomes

1. PROVIDENCE UNIVERSITY Cause and Effect &Hypothesizing College of Management Wu-Lin Chen(wlchen@pu.edu.tw) Department of Computer Science and Information Management

2. Cause and Effect

3. Purposes of Cause and Effect Essay • Persuade your audience to approve or disapprove of something • Inform your audience • EX: newspaper or magazine type essay • Speculate about cause and effect relationships

4. Consider Your Audience • Explain any unfamiliar processes or terms that are part of the cause and effect relationship you are presenting (Inform type essay) • Do not pretend your cause and effect relationship is anything more than speculative if you are trying to persuade your audience with a speculative cause and effect essay • After all, it is not a fact

5. Two Questions in Cause and Effect • Cause and effect analysis seeks answers for the following two questions: • Why (or how) did something happen? (Causes) • What were the results? (Effects)

6. Cause and Effect in English • Cause explain why something happens and effect describe outcomes. • …a wavelength of 400 nanometers (nm) causes us to see violet. • CAUSE: wavelength of 400 nm • EFFECT: we see violet • Sentence pattern: the cause precedes the effect. • The color brown is induced by the mixing of wavelengths. • EFFECT: the color brown • CAUSE: a mixing of wavelengths • Sentence pattern: the effect precedes the cause. • Yellow can be produced by either its own wavelength or a mixture of the wavelengths for red and green. • EFFECT: yellow • CAUSE 1: its own wavelength or • CAUSE 2: a mixture if the wavelengths for red and green. • Wavelengths shorter than that of violet produce ultraviolet light that can damage skin cells. • CAUSE: wavelengths shorter than that of violet • EFFECT/CAUSE: ultraviolet light • EFFECT: damaged skin cells

7. Sentence Patterns Effect Cause causes results in produces induces a white light. A mixing of all wavelengths Effect Cause caused by due to induced by a result of produced by a mixing of wavelengths. White light is

8. Sentence Patterns (cont.) Cause Effect If When As all the wavelengths are mixed, a white light is produced. Effect Cause if when as A white light is produced all the wavelengths are mixed. Note: If effects are also predictions, it can be expressed with the future tense.

9. Subordinations • Using subordination to focus on the important part of the sentence • putting the focus in a main clause • following by the less important idea in the subordination or secondary clause • EX: Human beings cannot live on the moon because there is no air or water there. Main clause: It is a independent sentence and stands alone as a sentence. Subordination: It is a dependent sentence and depends on the main clause.

10. Organizing the Cause and Effect Essay • Proceed from a cause to an effect • Give an effect and then discuss the possible reasons or causes for that effect • Connection between the effect and the cause may be speculative and beyond proof

11. Organizing the Cause and Effect Essay • Tips • Start with what you want to emphasize • If you are dealing with more than one cause or one effect, you could • first discuss all the causes then all the effects • or alternate them • or discuss one set of cause and effect relationships, then a second set, …and so on • DO NOT confuse your reader, make sure your presentation is clear about which cause is related to which effect

12. Reasoning • Should not give your audience any reason to question your logic • Before writing, • list the cause and their effects next to each other • Examine each cause and effect relationship and label it speculative or proved • Start with proved relationship and then proceed to speculative ones, or only discuss the speculative • Make sure these cause and effect relationships fit into your paper and help you make your points

13. Reasoning (Cont.) • DO NOT oversimplify cause and effect relationships • DO NOT mistake simple coincidence for a cause and effect relationship (i.e. Do not jump to conclusion) • EX: Firing the football coach at the end of the poor season does not mean he was the cause of the team’s poor record, nor does hiring a new coach mean the team will have a good season.

14. Writing Skills • Patterns of Organization • Time (chronology) • Space • Logic • Move from the general to the specific (deductive) • Move from the specific to the general (inductive) • Move from the simple to the complex (never the reverse!)

15. Writing Skills (Cont.) • Effect to cause • Try to answer why (or how) did something happen. (the effect is already known) • Discuss possible causes • Cause to effect • Try to answer what were the results? (the cause is already known) • Discuss possible effects

16. Hypothesizing

17. Definition • Hypothesis • a tentative or temporary solution to a science problem or an explanation for why something happens • Theory • a hypothesis becomes accepted in the science world • Principle or natural law • a theory explains or unifies a great deal of information

18. Hypothesis in English • Aristotle’s hypotheses • Objects fall with a speed proportional to their weight. • The natural state of an object is to be at rest and a force is necessary to keep an object in motion • The hypothesis is always in the form of a complete sentence, not a sentence fragment or a question

19. Hypothesis in English (Cont.) • Galileo’s hypotheses • All bodies fall at equal rates. • If an object does not meet with resistance, it will continue to move at a constant speed even if no force is applied. • Many hypotheses are stated in the present simple tense • Sometimes, a hypothesis is expressed as a prediction, using the future tense with will

20. Expressing Probability in Hypotheses • Hypotheses are often expressed with words that indicate their tentative nature or unproven status • There is life on Jupiter. • There must be life on Jupiter. • There is probably life on Jupiter. • There may be life on Jupiter. • There could be life on Jupiter. • There might be life on Jupiter. • It is unlikely that there is life on Jupiter. • It is impossible for there to be life on Jupiter. • There is no life on Jupiter. Strong Weak

21. Modal • A group of auxiliary verbs that modify verbs • Modals of expressing probability • must • may • could • might

22. Writing Skills • Writing conclusions • Restate the main point for emphasis • Summary the information to review or clarify it • Relate the significant of what was written • Transition words for writing a conclusion • therefore • as a result • for this reason • thus • hence • consequently • so • because of this