Assignment: Cause-and-Effect Essay
Prewriting and Draft
For this assignment, you will work through the prewriting and drafting stages of your writing process in a cause-and-effect essay.
Cause-and-Effect Essay Prompt
Choose one of the following questions, and answer it in an essay developed by analyzing causes or effects. Thequestion you decide on should concern a topic you care about so that the examples are a means ofcommunicating an idea; not an end in themselves.
People and Their Behavior
Why did one couple you know marry or divorce?
Why is a particular friend or relative always getting into trouble?
Why do people root for the underdog?
How does a person’s alcohol or drug dependency affect others in his or her family? Art andEntertainment
Why do teenagers like rock music?
Why is a particular television show so popular?
Contemporary Issues
Why is a college education important?
Why do marriages between teenagers fail more often than marriages between people in other age groups?
Education
The best courses are the difficult ones.
Students at schools with enforced dress codes behave better than students at schools without such codes.
Politics and Social Issues
Drug and alcohol addiction does not happen just to “bad” people.
Media and Culture
The Internet divides people instead of connecting them. Good art can beugly.
A craze or fad reveals something about the culture it arises in.
The best rock musicians treat social and political issues in their songs.
Rules for Living
Lying may be justified by the circumstances. Friends are peopleyou can’t always trust.
Writing Your Cause-and-Effect Essay
Prewriting
STEP 1: To get started writing, first pick at least one prewriting strategy (brainstorming, rewriting, journaling,mapping, questioning, sketching) to develop ideas for your essay. Write down what you do, as you’ll need to submitevidence of your prewrite.
Drafting
STEP 2: Next, write a draft of your essay.
Develop an enticing title.
Use the introduction to pull the reader into your thesis with a singular experience.
Avoid addressing the assignment directly. (Don’t write “I am going to write about the causes and effects of …”—this takes the fun out of reading the work!)
Think of things said at the moment your perspective on the topic became clear. Perhaps use a quote, or an interestingpart of the experience that will grab the reader.
Let the story reflect your own voice. Is your voice serious? Humorous? Matter-of-fact?
Organize the essay in a way that may capture the reader, but don’t string the reader along too much with “next, next,next.”
To avoid just telling what happens, make sure you take time to show significant details and reflect on why topic—and your experience with it—is significant.
Assignment Instructions
Review the grading rubric as listed on this page. Choose a writing promptas listed above on this page.
Create a prewriting in the style of your choice for the prompt.
Develop a draft according to the following guidelines. Papers submitted that do not meet the requirementswill be returned to you ungraded.
Minimum of 3 typed, double-spaced pages (about 600–750 words), Times New Roman, 12 pt font size
MLA formatting
Submit your prewriting and draft as a single file upload. Requirements
Be sure to:
Develop an essay developed by analyzing causes or effects or the prompt
Decide on something you care about so that the narration is a means of communicating an idea Includecharacters, conflict, sensory details as appropriate to help your essay come alive
Create a sequence of events in a plot to support the logical flow of your essay Develop anenticing title
Use the introduction to pull the reader into your singular experience
Avoid addressing the assignment directly (Don’t write “I am going to write about…” – this takes the fun out of readingthe work!)
Let the essay reflect your own voice (Is your voice serious? Humorous? Matter-of-fact?)
Avoid “telling” your reader about what happened. Instead, “show” what happens using active verbs and/orconcrete and descriptive nouns and details.
If you developed your prewriting by hand on paper, scan or take a picture of your prewriting, load the
image onto your computer, and then insert the image on a separate page after your draft.