Cause and Effect, Lecture notes of Life Sciences

Download Cause and Effect and more Lecture notes Life Sciences in PDF only on Docsity! Reading Handout #123 Cause & Effect Cause and Effect Many times one event causes something else to happen. The cause comes first, and then the result or effect can be seen. The cause leads to the effect. Example: The tornado caused a lot of damage. Without thinking about it, you connect causes with effects every day. You might drive to school very early so that you can find a good place to park. Your thinking about how hard it will be to find a parking place is the cause. Your driving to school early to get a parking place is the effect. A larger example may help. In certain winters the U.S. had such extremely low temperatures in some southern states that the frost line reached Florida, damaging the state’s orange crop. Many oranges were lost. On the television news, it was predicted that consumers would soon be forced to pay more for orange products at the store. A number of results came from this single cause – sudden cold temperatures. A couple of them are listed below: Cause Effect 1. freezing temperatures damaged orange crop 2. damaged orange crop fewer oranges harvested What effect might come from the cause shown below? Write one. Cause Effect 3. fewer oranges harvested ___________________________________ You may have written, “higher prices for orange products,” since a short supply of a commodity leads to higher prices. You can probably think of other causes and effects stemming from this event. For example, higher prices for orange products (cause) might mean that fewer orange products will be bought (effect). Also, a damaged Florida orange crop (cause) might mean the sale of more California oranges (effect). As you see, events can sometimes lead to a chain of cause-and-effect relationships. Analyzing cause and effect can help you understand what you read and also help you write about cause and effect clearly so that your readers will understand what caused what. Reading Handout #123 Cause & Effect In writing, cause and effect is frequently signaled by key words such as because the reason was since led to therefore brought about as a result the outcome was consequently the end result was accordingly was responsible for Examples: I hurried to get ready for school because I got up late. The outcome of my talk with my son’s teacher was a better understanding of my son’s difficulty in school. Although causes normally come before their effects, in some sentences the effects may be stated before the cause. You could write I drove to school very early so that I could find a good place to park. (cause before effect) Or you could write In order to find a good place to park, I drove to school very early. (effect before cause) Notice in the sentence below that the effect comes before the cause even though in reality the cause happened before the effect: America finally turned its attention to the exploration of space largely because of the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik in the late 1950s. Exercise 1 Directions: Underline the cause and the effect in each sentence below and write a c above the cause and an e above the effect. Some sentences may include more than one cause or effect. 1. In addition to extreme overpopulation, extended drought has contributed to severe famine in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa. 2. Population growth in the Sunbelt States has come from many companies relocating to that area.