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EH 1010, English Composition I 1

UNIT VII STUDY GUIDE The Cause and Effect Essay

Learning Objectives Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Compare and contrast the various elements of the cause-and- effect essay.

2. Distinguish between the conventions of the cause-and-effect essay and generate examples.

Written Lecture Part 1: Understand the Cause-and-Effect Essay Chapter 9 of Strategies for Writing Successful Research Papers So far you have written a definition essay and an illustration essay. Both of these essays are modes of delivering an argument, each with its own use and effect upon the reader. These modes can be used to make arguments, but it is far more likely that the skills that you have learned from these modes will transfer to a larger work, such as a research paper, which may have many modes within it. Because a research paper contains so many rhetorical devices, such as modes, it is important to understand how each one functions and how the employment of each might have a different effect on the reader. Therefore, before you move on to the final unit, Unit VIII, it is important to add yet another mode to your writer’s toolkit. The cause-and-effect essay is a mode of writing, but because of the way that it is dependent upon causality, it can also be considered a genre. As a genre, the cause-and-effect essay structure can be applied to an entire research paper for successful results. As such, the cause-and-effect essay is a somewhat more complicated form that may draw upon the skills of definition and illustration. The cause-and-effect essay is an argumentative form as well. While it can be construed as purely informational, one must recall that the writer is arguing for a particular causality—indeed, the argument is the connection between the cause and the effect. Play close attention to the patterns of causal analysis (cause-and-effect essays) on pages 149-151 of Strategies for Writing Successful Research Papers. Note the variety of ways that the cause-and-effect essay can be structured. Each structure evokes a different response because each one delivers the argument to the reader in a different way and in a different order. Is there one in particular that makes the most sense to you? Sometimes, the subject matter itself will dictate the way that the essay is structured; other times, the writer himself or herself will make that decision based on the desired effect. No matter how you structure your essay, it will have an effect on the reader. To be a good writer means that you are able to control that effect by understanding the writing situation and the most appropriate structure for that writing situation.

Reading Assignment The Little, Brown Compact Handbook with Exercises Chapter 16: Parallelism—Sections 16a-16d, pp. 154-157 Chapter 49: Numbers—Sections 49a- 49c, pp. 365-367 Strategies for Writing Successful Research Papers Chapter 9: Cause and Effect: Explaining Why, pp. 149- 163 “Reading Strategies,” “Reading Critically,” and “Reading as a Writer,” pp. 236-237 Richard Tomkins, “Old Father Time Becomes a Terror,” pp. 237-240 Caroline Knapp, “Why We Keep Stuff,” pp. 241-243 Anne Roiphe, “Why Marriages Fail,” pp. 244- 246 Belinda Luscombe and Kate Stinchfield, “Why We Flirt,” pp. 247-250

EH 1010, English Composition I 2

Consider carefully the glossed over notion on page 152 in reference to avoiding the pitfall of mistaking chronology for causation. It is essential that your essay steer away from listing events in direct succession—as though one event following another is causality itself. Just keep in mind that you are looking at the relationship between the cause and the effect, and that relationship is both your focus and your argument; the details of chronology only matter as they affect your explication of that relationship. As always, you should note the flow chart on page 163. Again, you will notice the more complex nature of writing a cause-and-effect essay. Part 2: Reading Examples of the Cause and Effect Essay Strategies for Writing Successful Research Papers

• “Reading Strategies,” “Reading Critically,” and “Reading as a Writer,” pp. 236-237

• Richard Tomkins, “Old Father Time Becomes a Terror,” pp. 237-240 • Caroline Knapp, “Why We Keep Stuff,” pp. 241-243 • Anne Roiphe, “Why Marriages Fail,” pp. 244-246 • Belinda Luscombe and Kate Stinchfield, “Why We Flirt,” pp. 247-250

As with the previous two units, you will first peruse the reading guides on pages 236-237 of Strategies for Writing Successful Research Papers. These will give you an idea of how to best engage the essay examples assigned. Below are some previews and questions that you might want to keep in mind as you read. Richard Tomkins’ “Old Father Time Becomes a Terror” makes the case that technology has not given mankind the time that he thought it would. Instead, it has led to an overwhelming “time famine.” Do you think that Tomkins’ conclusions are correct? Are technology, industry, and consumerism really creating less time during our free time? Tomkins wrote this essay in 1999. Do you think that his argument could be even better made today? Note the blue text boxes in the margins of the essay that indicate the structure of the essay. How does the form of the essay compare to the forms suggested in Chapter 9? In her “Why We Keep Stuff,” Caroline Knapp muses on the cathartic feeling that can come from getting rid of one’s “stuff.” She speculates that the benefits of doing so outweigh the struggle to part with this stuff. In many ways, then, Knapp’s essay has much to do with a projection of a potential causality, but the essay is still grounded in the present cause and effect relationship between what will and can happen if someone hoards. How is the structure of this essay different from that of Tomkins’? Is it as effective? How is Knapp’s essay made more complex by its inclusion of two possible causalities? In “Why Marriages Fail,” Ann Roiphe identifies the effect almost immediately in the title of the essay—divorce—and she dedicates the essay itself to developing the causes that lead to that effect. Her concern, then, is not the effect itself, not what divorce is, but how a marriage may end in divorce. How is knowing and understanding the effect up front effective in this essay? How is the structure and premise of the essay engaging, even though there is not much illustration? How does Roiphe’s language itself and the vividness of it act as linguistic illustrations? In their “Why We Flirt,” Belinda Luscombe and Kate Stinchfield identify the biological and intentional sides of flirtation and its purpose in our social interactions. How is this essay a cause-and-effect essay? Why is this essay not just an informational essay? What argument is the essay trying to make? The

Key Terms 1. Causation 2. Coordinating

conjunctions 3. Correlative

conjunctions 4. Parallelism

EH 1010, English Composition I 3

voice in this essay is somewhat informal, but much of the information that is presented is scientific in nature. How is this combination both effective and ineffective for the type of essay being written? Read each essay, and consider how each is an example of a different kind of cause-and-effect essay, each with its own structure and rhetorical strategies. How might you model your essay after one of these? Part 3: Unit Grammar Lesson: Parallelism and Number Chapter 16 and 49 of The Little, Brown Compact Handbook with Exercises Parallelism is a grammar skill that most teachers of writing would really like to see their students improve upon because having unparallel sentences not only undermines the content of the students’ work, but also leads to a general confusion about what is being conveyed. In addition, the rules of parallelism are perhaps some of the easiest to learn. Essentially, when you are constructing a sentence with a list of two or more items, then you need to make sure that all items in the list “are parallel,” meaning that they all have the same linguistic structure, are all the same parts of speech, or have the same suffixes. Sometimes parallelism has to do with the use of pairs of words that must occur in the sentence together if one is used. Conjunctively, understanding the conventions of using numbers in your text can enable you to improve the professionalism of your writing by mastering only a few basic rules. In this lesson, you will learn about how numbers should appear in a sentence and when it is appropriate to use the numeral or to write out the word for a number.

References Aaron, J. E. (2010). The Little, Brown compact handbook with exercises

(7th ed.). New York, NY: Longman. Lester, J. D., Lester, J. D., Reinking, J. A., & von der Osten, R. (2010/2011).

Strategies for writing successful research papers (Custom ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Learning Solutions.