Consider the causes and effects in the following thesis statements. List a cause and effect for each one on your own sheet of paper.

• The growing childhood obesity epidemic is a result of technology.
• Much of the wildlife is dying because of the oil spill.
• The town continued programs that it could no longer afford, so it went bankrupt.
• More young people became politically active as use of the Internet spread throughout society.
• While many experts believed the rise in violence was due to the poor economy, it was really due to the summer-long heat wave. 

Write three cause-and-effect thesis statements of your own for each of the following five broad topics.

• Health and nutrition
• Sports
• Media
• Politics
• History

Look at some of the cause-and-effect relationships from Exercise 2. Outline the links you listed. Outline one using a cause-then-effect structure. Outline the other using the effect-then-cause structure.

Choose one of the ideas that you outlined in Exercise 3 and write a full cause-and-effect essay. Be sure to include an engaging introduction, a clear thesis, strong evidence and examples, and a thoughtful conclusion.