Cause and effect

You stay up well into the early hours playing computer games. The next day you are very tired and you fall asleep during the maths test. You fail the test and get punished as well. That's a rather sad example of cause and effect. You read the Young Post and your English gets better. That's a happier one!

One common piece of writing is the cause-and-effect essay. You are set, or you observe, a recent trend. More mainland tourists are coming to Hong Kong; the structure of secondary schooling is going to be changed; people are eating more fast-food, and women are staying single or getting married much later. You could treat these trends as effects and ask what the causes are (Why are people eating more fast-food?). Or, more probably, you could investigate what effects these trends will have on society.

We will take the last one as an example. Women in Hong Kong are staying single or getting married much later. First of all, we need to establish this is true. It is the sort of trend covered by surveys, so it should not be difficult to find some figures to confirm it. Facts and figures are the most convincing but they can be brought alive by personal observations: I have noticed that none of my 27-year-old sister's friends have got married yet.

The following paragraphs explore the effects. First, you can brainstorm: fewer children, harder for men to find wives in Hong Kong, women pay more attention to their careers, greater spending power among this group, older parents and so on. These then need to be classified in some way: consequences for women, for men, for families, for children, effects on the economy and so on.

Soon you will have a good cause-and-effect essay emerging. You may believe some effects are very positive (women have more freedom and independence), while you are not sure or worry about others (falling population, is it better to have young parents or older ones?). This would be another way to organise your essay.

Exercise 1

Match the causes and possible effects.