As every essay has its purpose and teaches a student particular things, a cause and effect essay is a great example of an academic piece that improves student’s analytical skills and critical thinking. Here is a guide that will help you understand how you can write a cause and effect essay of your own, how to avoid common mistakes, and how to choose a topic for your essay. Let’s get started!
Choosing the Topic for Your Cause and Effect Essay
The first step in writing any type of essay is to find what you are going to write about. Choosing a topic for your essay might be nor the easiest task, but not in the case of a cause and effect essay. Why? Let’s look at the definition of what cause and effect essay is.
Definition
Cause and effect essay is an academic work that is based on the facts, events, and actions that lead to a particular result. The purpose of such an essay is to analyze the impact and the outcomes that can also be named as reasons (cause) and results (effect), their correlation, and possible future effects.
Types
There are a few types of cause and effect essay, depending on the correlation between different causes and effects.
- Multiple causes and one effect – this is the type of a paper that illustrates and analyzes how different causes in their variety contribute to a particular result. If you are working on this type of a cause and effect essay, you should break your body paragraphs down into a few parts and focus each of the paragraphs on one cause and its impact.
- One cause and multiple effects – is a type of paper that is aimed to show how one cause can result in various effects. This type of paper requires in-depth research on the topic and analysis of connections between various factors.
- Chain of causes and effects – this is the hardest type of cause and effect essays. It is based on the chain of different causes and effects that are connected with each other. It should show the correlation between various actions and events and how they result in other effects and cause up to the end of the chain.
When choosing the topic for your essay, be sure to consider the type of essay that you are required to write. Not every topic is suitable for a particular type.
So, you can see that finding a topic for a cause and effect essay is not that hard – there are multiple problems and subjects that you can write about and which are surrounding us every day. Here are a few cause and effect essay topic ideas:
- Modern music and its influence on teen culture.
- The impact of junk food on obesity among junior school students.
- How mental health is influenced by cyberbullying.
- What causes some videos to become viral?
- How owning a pet influences people’s health.
When picking a topic for your essay, be sure to pick the one that resonates with you – it is the best way to write a deep and well-thought piece. Think about the things that you see around you and that are easy to correlate with particular causes. For example, urbanization and its effect on human health and the environment.
Structuring Your Work
Once you know what the topic of your essay is, it’s time to start researching the topic to find the most credible sources for your facts and the latest data on the topic. Essays like this often require suing statistics to prove your point of view – you need to use only reliable numbers from official sources.
The structure of a cause and effect essay is very much alike to other essays that you are used to writing. It should start with the introduction part that contains your thesis statement, prove your point of view operating facts and data in the body section of your paper, and summarize the topic with the conclusion part.
The Introduction
The beginning of your essay – the introduction – is the part where you present some background information and come up with the claim of yours – your thesis statement. You can also put some statistics information in here to help your reader understand that the problem that you choose to write about is important to cover. In fact, many students use statistics in the very first sentence of an essay – the hook. If you can find some fascinating statistical data to intrigue and catch the attention of your reader, you can definitely use it in the introduction part.
Thesis Statement
Your thesis statement is the core of your work – it should sum up your ideas and thought in one sentence to let your reader understand what the work is. You need to summarize your main idea – the correlation between the cause and effect. For example:
“The development of social media leads to an increase in cases of cyberbullying, thus, there should be created more organizations that are oriented towards psychological support for cyberbullying victims.”
The Body Paragraphs
The body paragraphs of your essay should be focused on the cause (or various causes) and the effect (or various effects) and the correlation between them. You can use different methods to prove your point of view – statistical data, related researches, quotes from authoritative sources, situation modeling, etc. Your aim is not to persuade your reader, but to make logical conclusions and analyze the problem from various angles.
When working on your body paragraphs, make sure you don’t jump from one thesis, claim, or fact to another without proper transition. Use the last sentence of each paragraph to connect one paragraph with another, using transitional words.
You should also make sure that each paragraph of your work is focused on one single cause (or effect) and contains enough proof to support your point of view.
The Conclusion
The concluding part for your cause and effect essay is pretty much the same as for other types of essays that you usually write. In other words, it doesn’t have any specific requirements except that it should summarize your essay and your point of view. It should also mention the key elements from the previous parts of your essay, including the thesis statement, though you shouldn’t repeat it but paraphrase instead. You should also end your essay on a powerful note – consider adding some suggestions for future research or the possible ways of solving the problem. For example, if you are writing about air pollution and its effect on global warming, you can end your essay with some suggestions on how humanity can reduce this bad influence by recycling and finding new energy sources.
Extra Tips on Writing a Cause and Effect Essay
So, now you know what the basic structure of a cause and effect essay is and what it should be about. Here are a few tips and tricks that you surely will find helpful for your writing:
- Choose the topic that is not very banal – you can ask your teacher or professor for advice if you are not sure of the topic that you chose is perspective for an essay of this type.
- Use the specific words that are common for a cause and effect essay: as a result of, because of, it result(s) in, due to, consequently, thus, therefore, etc.
- If you are working with multiple causes or effects, use the words like: the first cause (effect) is, another cause (effect) is, one of the causes (effects) is, etc.
- Don’t lose the logical flow of your essay – make sure each and every claim that you make throughout the work supports your thesis statement.
- Make sure you investigate the topic thoroughly and get familiar with different points of view. If you have another opinion, not the one that other researchers stick to, you will need enough of credible evidence to prove you are right.
- Use multiple examples to assemble with the causes and effects discussed in your essay; it’s always great to have more than one example to use as evidence in your academic work, so make sure you start writing when have enough credible proves.
- Be sure to turn to a professional writing team if you need help with your school or college assignments. Don’t be hesitant as we have experts in different fields that can help you create a great cause and effect essay or any other type of academic work. Our experts can not only help you polish your essay, edit and proofread it but also write the one for you from scratch.
- Before turning in your paper, make sure to proofread it thoroughly and make changes if needed. Check the grammar of your work, punctuation, and the overall style of the work. You might need to add more details of you see that your work lacks credible proves.
That’s all for a cause and effect essay. We hope that you find our guide useful.
Karen Palmer
