Intro to Cause and Effect Objectives To understand

Intro to Cause and Effect • Objectives: • • To understand the components of a cause and effect essay To understand the purpose of cause and effect To understand the outcomes of the cause and effect unit To be introduced to the cause and effect paper • Agenda • • Intro Components of Cause and Effect Unit outcomes Cause and Effect Paper • Homework • Post your topic choice to the blog

Intro • Why do cause and effect? How will this help with life? • Sophomore year you all did a unit on Causes of Conflict: • Think back and write down the different types of causes and the different types of effects • Then give a historical example for each one

Let’s Get Personal • Think of a big event in your life, either positive or negative, that had a profound effect on you • List the causes of the event • Categorize the causes of the event • Lists the effects of the event • Categorize the effects of the event

What is Cause and Effect • “Causes and effect analyzes why something happens. ” (Patterns of College Writing) • The following was taken from : http: //grammar. ccc. commnet. edu/grammar/composition/c ause_effect. htm

Steps of writing cause and effect essay 1. What is your topic ? • Let us say that I am going to write on the growing popularity of fantasy literature. 2. You must choose a topic you can write about while consulting secondary sources. So pick something you know a lot about and would know what sources you could use. (An example of a cause paper on why soccer isn’t going to be big in the US can be found here. ) • If I am going to write about fantasy literature’s growing popularity, I have to know a lot about fantasy literature. I do. I have attended a few cons, gone to writers’ talks, and read a lot in the genre. I have looked at fantasy writer’s websites. I have research the history of fantasy writing. I’ve looked at publication history and book sale figures.

Steps Continued 3. You must also choose whether you are going to deal with causes or effects. You may not deal with both. The paper is too short to deal adequately with both. • I can talk about the cause of the growing popularity of fantasy literature (Real life is too stressful? war? People who grew up on Tolkein and C. S. Lewis are passing that on? ) or I can talk about the effects (Romance novels now have fantasy series. Vampires are part of mystery novels. People are becoming more open to the supernatural [again]. ) My first two effects are not really effects, they are symptoms or proof that fantasy literature’s popularity is growing. The last, however, might be an effect.

Steps Continued 4. What are three causes OR effects that you will deal with in this essay? These will be the topic sentences of your main body paragraphs. • For my examples I would use: Fantasy returns wonder to the scientific world. Fantasy encourages people to strive for difficult goals. Fantasy helps people suspend their disbelief.

Steps Continued 5. What is your purpose? What point are you trying to make by revealing these key causes or effects? • Fantasy is changing the way post-Enlightenment people look at the world around them. 6. Create a thesis sentence for your paper. (You do not have to use the first one you come up with, but write something before you begin your paper. ) • Fantasy is changing the post-Enlightenment worldview by returning wonder to the world, encouraging big goals, and suspending disbelief.

Intro to the Essay • For this unit you will be graded on the following things: • • • Content (thesis, evidence and analysis) Organization Conventions Style The skill of Cause and Effect Writing

Essay Topic • For this essay, instead of me giving you a topic to write on, you get to choose! • Why do you think I am allowing you to choose your own topic? • Topic Selection Possibilities: • Think of a big event in your life, either positive or negative, that had a profound effect on you • Think about a time you have had an epiphany in your life. What caused it? What were the effects? • Think about a current event that you find fascinating. What were the causes? What were the effects? • Think about a literary or historical topic we have covered in class that you found interesting. What were the causes and what were the effects? • You have until the end of the period to complete the 6 steps of cause and effect writing that we just went over. You must have it turned into turnitin. com by 7: 00 am tomorrow morning.