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Cause-Effect Essay

Total Value: 11%


Due Date: 7/7/10 by 5:50 p.m., in the D2L drop box, on the due date; if the drop box records a 5:51 p.m. submission, the paper is one calendar-day late. Expect to lose 10% for each calendar day the paper is turned in late. Must be turned in as a MS Word DOC or DOCX file. Consult the syllabus for all turn-in requirements and associated penalties.

Background: While working on this essay, keep in mind that because the English Department Final Examination is worth 33% of your final course grade, and the departmental standard form for the final examination is a five-paragraph essay, all your major essays (Essay 1, Essay 2, and Essay 3) for this course will be in that same five-paragraph essay format. Approaching the major projects in this manner will help to prepare you for the final examination. Basically, from day one of the semester, we will practice the skills on which you will be graded with regard to the final examination.
General Requirements:

  • Page count: 450 words minimum to 550 maximum, in exactly five paragraphs. If your essay falls short of or exceeds the required word count, or if it does not follow the required paragraph-count, the grade will certainly suffer.
  • Work closely with all the lectures and course materials, and especially Lecture 2 and Lecture 7, all of which are available on D2L.
  • This essay is an analysis of the cause(s) and effect(s) of a particular problem or issue, so make certain that the essay has a thesis, which should clearly define the cause(s) and effect(s) your paper will focus on. The thesis must be the final sentence of the introductory paragraph. We will spend time on this during class.
  • Choose your topic ONLY from the list below, for to do otherwise would result in a substantial penalty against the grade your paper can receive.
  • Use the formatting guidelines established during class lectures and Lecture 2.
  • Pay attributions to any sources you engage to learn about the subject of your paper, but do not include MLA-type in-text citations, and do not include a works cited type page.
  • For proper attributions to sources, work with Lecture 7, which covers the lectures on attributions that took place during class meetings.
  • Remember to title your essay, but do not use the name of this assignment. In other words, no part of your essay's title should read "Essay 2," or "Cause-Effect Essay.
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    Prompt: From the list of topics below, choose ONE, and then figure out which cause(s) and effect(s) you will write about. It is up to you whether to focus mostly on causes or effects, but do not choose too many causes or effects, for this is a short paper, and covering too many causes/effects will lead to a paper that does not analyze any one cause or effect effectively.

    Give the focus of your esssay considerable thought, and examine causes and effects that are worthwhile to write about, by which I mean your focus should not be simplistic or obvious. For example, if you decide on noise pollution as a topic, you might choose jet airliners as a cause, but as an effect, it would be too simplistic to focus on the fact that the noise is annoying. Again, give your focus sufficient thought, and examine causes and effects that are interesting and worthwhile.
    MLA Style Guidelines:
    We will use MLA Style Guidelines only for formatting of your assignments, but not documentation and research. For more about documentation and research, see the information below. On the D2L content tree, I have provided you with a few links to MLA Style Guidelines, and you are expected to engage them to the point where the formatting of your assignments follow MLA Style. Work with these links, and especially
  • "Paraphrase: Write it in Your Own Words"
  • "Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing"
  • "Lecture 2: Formatting and Academic Prose: Read This Before Turning in Any Work"
  • "Lecture 4: TurnItIn.com: Plagiarism Detection Software"
  • "Lecture 7: Research, Documentation and Attributions to Sources"
  • "The 5 Paragraph Essay Format"


    • Moreover, work with these materials for the duration of the semester. Papers that negotiate MLA skills poorly will receive lower grades.
    Grammar, Punctuation, and General Writing Skills: Understand that grammar and punctuation are a very important factor that determines the grade your paper can receive. Consult the syllabus for information on the SMARTHINKING service. Even so, I have included some information here:
    SMARTHINKING Online Tutoring Service:
    SMARTHINKING is an online tutoring service that Temple College makes available at no cost to its students. SMARTHINKING provides tutoring in writing. Tutoring is available 24/7. With SMARTHINKING you can:

  • Connect with an e-structor and interact with a live tutor.
  • Submit your Writing for any class to their Online Writing Lab.
  • Submit a Question and receive a reply from a tutor.
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    Example of the beginning of a cause-effect essay, by Bob Kuttner, "The Declining Middle," published in The Atlantic, July, 1983:           The erosion of the middle of the labor market is easy to misinterpret, because its roots are multiple. During the 1970s, the entry into the work force of an unprecedented number of women and of young adults born during the baby boom resulted in too many workers for the jobs available, and depressed wages. The decline of the middle also has something to do with the explosive growth in world trade since 1960. As manufacturing technologies have become more mobile, and multinational firms more footloose, production jobs have migrated from the U.S. to countries where wages are low. In addition, technology itself has helped to provoke the shifts in the job market. For example, fewer American workers would have been needed to make steel in 1980 than in 1960 even if the pressures of global competition had not been a factor, because new machines have made many of their tasks redundant. Finally, the high rate of unemployment caused by these trends has tended to drive wages down further, especially at the low end, since it forces unskilled workers to compete for their jobs with unemployed people who are willing to do the work for less.

              Although demographic shifts, stepped-up world trade, unemployment, and especially the advance of technology all have had an effect on the shape of the job market, middle-level jobs have been disappearing ultimately as a result of the ways in which technological gains are being distributed. When a machine replaces a production worker, both the firm and consumers as a group benefit. The loss falls mainly on the worker who is displaced. If that loss is generalized to millions of high-paid workers, they suffer as a group, and the economy as a whole suffers a loss of worker purchasing power. Thus the lack of a mechanism to distribute some of the financial gains from technology to the work force comes back to haunt the entire economy.
    About the Example Essay: Notice how Kuttner not only introduces the topic effectively, he also frames the cause-effect aspect of the essay, and the thesis makes clear that the focus will be on unskilled workers, the specific group they must compete with, and what challenge that group faces. In short, his paper is quite narrow in scope, and yours should be too.
    Topics to Choose From (Choose ONLY ONE, and make certain it is from this list):
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects that a national health program will have regarding its impact on the American people.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects for the high dropout rate in college.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects of the popularity of fast food restaurants.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects of some minor invention.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects influence of media advertising and or films and TV shows on gender identity and/or standards of beauty.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects of the Great Depression.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects of our national debt and/or deficit.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects of the Patriot Act.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects of Facebook and/or Twitter.
  • Explain the major causes and/or effects of the escalating salaries of professional athletes.
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    Due Date: 7/7/10 by 5:50 p.m., in the D2L drop box, on the due date; if the drop box records a 5:51 p.m. submission, the paper is one calendar-day late. Expect to lose 10% for each calendar day the paper is turned in late. Must be turned in as a MS Word DOC or DOCX file. Consult the syllabus for all turn-in requirements and associated penalties.