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| Being president is hard on the body. What is the cause in the previous sentence? What is the effect? |
Cause
and effect essays seek to explain how something happened. In order to
trace this change, the author of a cause and effect argument must first
explain the way things were. The author then needs to explain how things changed and explain why these things changed. Again to review, a cause and effect essay must discuss the following three elements:
- A discussion of the way things were
- A discussion of what changed
- An argument about what caused this change
Similarly,
many cause and effect arguments evaluate if the changes they discuss
were positive. For instance, in the book that we are about to read--Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld's The Influencing Machine--the authors are interested in understanding why the news media is the way it is. In order to do this, the authors will look at the history of the news media and what forces caused it to change.
To
give an example of a cause and effect argument, let's look at the photo
above. On the left is President Obama upon his first election. He is a
very youthful looking forty-seven. Almost eight years later, President
Obama looks his age (if not older) at fifty-four. What happened? This
would be the basis of my cause and effect argument. I could argue that
the job of the presidency is so physically demanding that President
Obama has aged faster. However, I could also argue that his seeming
accelerated aging was caused by genetics. I could also argue that it was
caused by a number of factors. The strength of any of these arguments
would depend on the evidence I can marshal to my advantage.
HW:
The Transition to College Writing, 138-63
EasyWriter, 181-8, 256-63 (Exercises 28.1 & 29.2)
