Writing Workshop Persuading with Cause and Effect Feature Menu Assignment Prewriting Choose a Situation Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone Analyze the Cause and Effects Gather and Evaluate Evidence Write Your Opinion Statement Decide on a Call to Action Practice and Apply

Persuading with Cause and Effect Assignment: Write an essay in which you examine the causes and effects of a situation and persuade the reader to take action to change it. When you look around your community and your school, you probably see that things are not perfect. What can you do about a situation you think needs to be changed? You can start by asking a few questions: What caused the situation? What negative effects is it having? What action could fix it? [End of Section]

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Choose a Situation Change agents are people who make things happen, often by persuading others to take action. Become a change agent by writing a persuasive cause-and-effect essay.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Choose a Situation Look at the world around you. Think about situations you think need to change. Brainstorm with other students about local situations or problems.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Choose a Situation Make a list of promising topics for your essay. school lunches not nutritious enough new housing infringing on coyote habitat community center short on resources no late buses for after- school activities not enough city parks Choose the one that you find most interesting might inspire the strongest response in your readers [End of Section]

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone Your essay will have a dual purpose: To explain the cause and effects of a situation To persuade your readers to take a specific action to change that situation

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone Think about what your readers, or audience, will need and want to know. Ask yourself How much do my readers know about the situation? Include any background information necessary to persuade your audience.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone What are my readers’ concerns or biases about the situation? Anticipate any objections—or counterclaims—your audience might have, and plan to address those in your essay. Counterclaim How to Address The expense of keeping the community center open will cause local taxes to go up. The center is well worth the investment; it will keep kids out of trouble, make our community safer, and lead to greater productivity.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone Tone is the attitude you convey toward your subject or your audience. For this essay, use words, details, and sentence structures that create a slightly formal tone. Your audience will take your ideas more seriously. [End of Section]

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Analyze the Cause and Effects Think about the cause-effect relationship that created the situation. Ask yourself What is the initial cause of the situation? Analyze the cause so that you can explain to your readers why the situation exists in the first place. Last year the city cut funding for the Heights Community Center. Because of these cuts, the center has been forced to eliminate its tutoring program and reduce its hours of operation.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Analyze the Cause and Effects What are two or three significant negative effects of the situation? Identify negative effects to persuade your readers that the situation needs to change. Many students’ grades are falling because they are no longer able to get tutoring at the center. More kids are getting into trouble after school because they have too much idle time. Young people have fewer opportunities to pursue hobbies or find mentors. [End of Section]

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Provide evidence to support your explanation of the cause and effects. Make sure your evidence is precise and relevant. Kinds of Supporting Evidence Expert opinions are statements made by an authority on a subject. Quotations present a person’s word-for-word statement on a topic. Facts are statements that can be proven true; statistics are facts in numeric form.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Kinds of Supporting Evidence Anecdotes are brief stories that illustrate general ideas. Commonly held beliefs are ideas that most people share. A case study is an individual example used as the basis for generalizations. An analogy is an explanation of something readers do not understand in terms of something familiar to them.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Make notes to record your evidence. Pair each piece of evidence with the effect it supports. Effect: Many students’ grades are falling. Evidence: Since the city made cuts to the center’s funding, 68 percent of students who had once received tutoring there have seen their overall grade-point average decrease by at least half a point. (statistic) Logical Reasoning

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Use rhetorical devices to shape your explanations for the negative effects. Effect: Falling grades for students Logical Appeal A study conducted by Bright Futures showed a strong correlation between high school grade-point averages and earning potential. Emotional Appeal Angela is worried that her grades won’t be good enough for her to earn a scholarship. “I’m really struggling now that the tutoring program has been canceled,” she lamented. Ethical Appeal The community has a responsibility to give its young people every opportunity to succeed. [End of Section]

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Write Your Opinion Statement Write an opinion statement in which you share your perspective on the changes needed for a situation. The Heights Community Center was established to help young people succeed at school and become more productive members of society. Citizens must pull together to make sure the center can fulfill that mission. [End of Section]

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Decide on a Call to Action Finally, decide what action your readers should take to improve the situation. Write a sentence that clearly states your call to action. Concerned citizens should write or call their city council members and urge them to restore funding to the Heights Community Center. Hint [End of Section]

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Practice and Apply Use the information in this presentation to plan a persuasive cause-and-effect essay. [End of Section]

The End

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Expert Opinions Officer Jody Mundez with the Heights police department reports that the number of calls related to juvenile crimes has increased since the center reduced its hours.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Quotations Officer Mundez commented, “The center is very important to the people of this community. Both the kids and the community are suffering from the cutbacks. It’s a shame. Funding for the center should be a higher priority.”

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Facts Sixty-eight percent of the students who had received tutoring at the center have seen a drop in their grades.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Anecdotes When the school day ends, Henry Grenda, a sophomore at Hilltop High School and the son of working parents, has the option of going home to an empty house, roaming the streets, or making his way to the Heights Community Center. Henry usually chooses the community center. However, now that the center has reduced its hours and closes at 5:00 P.M., Henry still faces an empty house when he gets home.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Commonly Held Beliefs Everyone wants young adults to do well in school and learn the skills they need to be successful and productive adults.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Case Study Last year, Breanne was consistently making the honor roll. This year, things are different. Without the free tutoring services she once received at Heights Community Center, Breanne’s grades have slipped. And she’s not alone. Many local students are in the same situation.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Analogy For the children and teenagers who go there, the Heights Community Center provides a calm harbor in today’s turbulent seas.

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Logical Reasoning Make sure to structure your evidence in a logical fashion. Group the evidence for each effect, and present one effect at a time. Good organization will help your readers follow your logic. Effect 1 evidence Effect 2 evidence Effect 3 evidence Need for Change + + =

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence Rhetorical Devices Each type of rhetorical device affects the reader in a different way. logical appeal—speaks to readers’ common sense and logic emotional appeal—targets readers’ hearts; speaks to emotions ethical appeal—addresses readers’ sense of right and wrong

Persuading with Cause and Effect Prewriting: Decide on a Call to Action Hint You may want to offer a choice between two possible courses of action. Concerned citizens can help improve this situation by taking one of the following actions: Contact city council members to urge them to restore funding to the community center. Volunteer a few hours a week as an instructor or mentor at the center.