Prewriting for Cause-Effect Essays
Instead of just leaping into writing, you should spend some time gathering information and organizing your thoughts. That's prewriting. This lesson will help you select a topic and gather details.
Prewriting for Topics
Cause-effect essays explain how one thing leads to another. To brainstorm cause-effect essay topics, think about changes to your school, community, or environment. Also consider important events in history.
Explore writing topics.
Answer the following questions to consider possible topics for your cause-effect essay.
- What changed or is changing in my school or community?
- What changed or is changing in the world?
- What changed or is changing in the environment?
- What is one event or invention that changed history?
Choose a writing topic.
Review your answers to the previous activity. Consider the causes and effects of each topic. Choose the topic you find most interesting and that has the clearest relationship between causes and effects. Write your topic below.
Prewriting to Gather Causes and Effects
Once you have chosen a topic, you need to explore the reasons it came into being and what resulted from it. The following activity will help you.
Research your topic.
Fill in a cause-effect web to research your topic. In the center, write your topic. In the left column, list causes of the topic. In the right column, write effects of the topic. Research your topic as needed to fully understand it.
Cause-Effect Web
Teaching Tip
Use this page to help guide students’ research in the library or with computer access.
Teaching Tip
If students struggle to identify causes and effects, their topic may not have a clear cause-effect relationship. In this case, encourage them to choose a different topic.
Prewriting to Focus Your Ideas
After researching your topic, you need to sort through the information that you have gathered and decide how you would like to focus your writing. With a cause-effect essay, your focus can take one of many forms. The following activity will help you choose a focus.
Choose a focus.
Decide if your essay will focus on many causes leading to one effect, or on one cause leading to many effects. The graphic that follows demonstrates the two different focuses. Choose the strategy that best fits your topic.
Create a focus statement.
Review the formula for creating an effective focus statement. Then write a focus statement that establishes a clear connection between the causes and effects for your topic.
Topic |
+ |
Connection between causes and effects |
= |
Focus statement |
|
School lunches |
new program (cause) changed the type, taste, and portion size of lunch food (effects) |
Ever since our school started a new program, our lunches have changed in type, taste, and size. |
- What is your topic?
- What is the connection between the causes and effects?
- Create a focus statement using your answers from questions 1 and 2.