Cause and Effect Essay: Writing Prompt

 

Choose one of the following questions, and answer it in an essay developed by analyzing causes or effects.   The question you decide on should concern a topic you care about so that the examples are a means of communicating an idea; not an end in themselves. 

PEOPLE AND THEIR BEHAVIOR

1. Why did one couple you know marry or divorce?
2. Why is a particular friend or relative always getting into trouble?
3. Why do people root for the underdog?
4. How does a person’s alcohol or drug dependency affect others in his or her family?

ART AND ENTERTAINMENT

1. Why do teenagers like rock music?
2. Why is a particular television show so popular?

CONTEMPORAY ISSUES

1. Why is a college education important?
2. Why do marriages between teenagers fail more often than marriages between people in other age groups?

EDUCATION

1. The best courses are the difficult ones
2. Students at schools with enforced dress codes behave better than students at schools without such codes.

POLICTICS AND SOCIAL ISSUES

1. Drug and alcohol addiction does not happen just to “bad” people.

MEDIA AND CULTURE

1. The Internet divides people instead of connecting them
2. Good art can be ugly
3. A craze or fad reveals something about the culture it arises in
4. The best rock musicians treat social and political issues in their songs.

RULES FOR LIVING

1. Lying may be justified by the circumstances
2. Friends are people you can’t always trust.

Writing Your Cause and Effect Essay

To get started writing your essay:

Video 1 Links to an external site.

Video 2 Links to an external site.

1. watch the above videos on how to write a cause and effect essay What Is An Essay?
2. take time to review possible subjects
3. use prewriting to help you narrow your topic to one experience.

Remember that "story starters" are everywhere. Think about it—status updates on social media websites can be a good place to start. You may have already started a "note"on Facebook, and now is your chance to develop that idea into a full narrative. If you keep a journal or diary, a simple event may unfold into a narrative. Simply said, your stories may be closer than you think!

When drafting your essay:

1. develop an enticing title
2. use the introduction to pull the reader into your singular experience
3. avoid addressing the assignment directly (don't write "I am going to write about my most significant experience" - this takes the fun out of reading the work!)
4. think of things said at the moment this experience started for you—perhaps use a quote, or an interesting part of the experience that will grab the reader
5. let the story reflect your own voice (is your voice serious, humorous, matter-of-fact?)
6. organize the essay in a way that may capture the reader, but don't string the reader along too much with "next, next, next."
7. To avoid just telling what happens, make sure you take time to reflect on why this experience is significant. 

---