In this post: How I wrote causes and effects in Essays 23 and 17, the short frame sentences from my notes with the hooks that link Body B to Body A, and a demo of the body paragraphs of a Causes & Solutions essay.
Problems/solutions essays · 3 parts
- 1. Variants, matching table, concrete solutions
- 2. My essays, frames and demo (you are here)
- 3. Mistakes, plan and practice
✦ In this post
4. Causes & Effects: causes and effects in my Essays 23 and 17
The two essays of mine that come closest to this type are good for seeing how to write causes and effects that do not repeat each other and are not too narrow.
Essay 23: why people become self-employed + the disadvantages (7)
The second sentence of the introduction is only one line, yet it covers both questions. It is a Causes & Effects frame I strongly recommend:
This phenomenon may result from several reasons and may lead to some drawbacks.
The first cause in Body A is explained through a contrast:
The first reason is that traditional jobs always have tight work shift. By running businesses by themselves, they can undoubtedly have flexiable schedule, providing more free time to do additional activities or stay with family members.
It first states the limitation of traditional jobs (the push), then the benefit of self-employment (the pull), so the reader easily understands why people make this choice. On wording: flexiable should be flexible, and what I meant by tight work shift is “fixed working hours”, which would sound more natural.
The first disadvantage in Body B is unstable income:
First and foremost, it is readily apparent that the salary those people earn is not stable. To put it another way, since those self-employed people do not have enough sources of stakeholders or suppliers, they sometimes do not have stable money or revenue to pay for themselves.
There is a nice match here: cause one is “freedom with time”, disadvantage one is “irregular income”. The price of freedom is having no fixed salary. The two points are connected but belong to different dimensions (time vs money); they are not two sides of the same thing, so it reads as cause and consequence rather than repetition. Unfortunately the mechanism is not clear: income is unstable not because of a lack of stakeholders or suppliers, but because the flow of customers is unstable. Writing since their income depends on how many customers they attract each month would be much more precise.
The second disadvantage (vulnerability to external shocks, with the pandemic as the example) contains a fatal slip: do have ability is missing not, so the meaning is completely reversed. I discussed this in the two-question post, so here is just a reminder: when you write solutions or effects, a missing negative can turn the whole match upside down.
Essay 17: a cause must explain “more and more people” (6.5)
This question is about a trend: why more and more people want to know the history of their house. My first cause was wanting a stronger sense of belonging to the community, and my second was:
Secondly, some people want to write some small stories and even publications for the place they live in. “Telling about you home place”, a famous writing competition which hold annually in Taiwan, is a good example of this matter.
The structure is fine: the cause first, then the competition as an example. But the cause itself is too narrow. People who want to write stories or publications are a small minority, which can hardly explain a trend of “more and more people”. Every point in a cause paragraph should be able to answer “why has this spread to so many people?” Causes that could actually support a trend include:
- Before buying or renting, people want to know about a building’s condition and safety (has it ever flooded, has the structure been altered?). This affects every resident.
- Old photographs and local histories are increasingly easy to find online, so researching history has become easier. This explains “why now”.
- The writing competition can stay, but as an example under a cause such as “wanting to record the story of your home town”.
This essay also hides a match I never wrote out: the second method in Body B is asking older neighbours, which echoes exactly the first cause in Body A, “wanting to fit into the community”. Adding one sentence to the methods paragraph, such as Talking to older neighbours can also help newcomers feel more connected to the community., would tie the two paragraphs together so that the essay reads as one developing analysis.
An effect is not the cause said again
The most common repetition in Causes & Effects essays is an effects paragraph that just rephrases the causes. Taking self-employment as an example (this is a demonstration):
| Cause | Effect (good version) | Effect (repetitive version) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ① | People want flexible hours | The line between work and life blurs, and many people actually end up working longer (individual level) | People can organise their time freely |
| ② | People want a sense of achievement and a business of their own | More small start-ups appear, creating new jobs (society level) | People feel a sense of achievement |
The “effects” in the right-hand column just turn the cause into a result, with no new information. The middle column holds the real effects: they answer “once this trend has happened, what new changes does it bring?” And one sits at the individual level and one at the society level, so the two are on different levels too.
5. Frame sentences: the short patterns from my notes
Below is the framework from my notes, plus the linking sentences I added later. Fill in your content and the match between Body A and Body B appears naturally in the sentences:
Problems & Solutions
Introduction, sentence 2: This essay looks at some of the problems arising from …, and suggests some measures to address them.
Body A: This trend has led to several problems. The most serious one is that … Another issue is that …
Body B: There are several actions that governments could take to solve the problems described above. To tackle the first problem, … As for the second issue, …
Conclusion: In conclusion, … causes problems such as A and B, but these can be addressed if … and ….
Causes & Solutions
Introduction, sentence 2: This essay will look at the main causes of this problem and suggest some solutions.
Body A: There are two main reasons for this. The first is that … The second reason is that …
Body B: Since the first cause is …, one effective solution would be to … This would … / To address the second cause, …
Conclusion: In conclusion, … is mainly caused by A and B. These causes could be tackled by … and ….
Causes & Effects
Introduction, sentence 2: This phenomenon may result from several reasons and may lead to some drawbacks. (Essay 23)
Body B: This trend has several consequences. On a personal level, … At a broader level, …
Conclusion: In conclusion, people … because of A and B. As a result, ….
In Body B, To tackle the first problem / As for the second issue / Since the first cause is … are the “hooks” for matching: they tell the reader exactly which earlier point each solution answers. I think they are the best-value linking phrases for this question type, and they do more for Coherence than purely additive words like Furthermore or Moreover.
6. Demo: the body paragraphs of a Causes & Solutions essay
Question (my paraphrase): In many countries, more and more children are overweight. What are the causes, and how can the problem be solved? These two paragraphs follow the matching table from Section 2 (see Part 1):
Demo (Body A): There are two main reasons for this trend. The first is that many parents, especially those who work long hours, rely on fast food and sugary drinks because they have little time to cook. Such meals are cheap and convenient, but they contain far more fat and sugar than children need. The second reason is that children today spend much of their free time in front of screens. Instead of playing outside after school, many of them sit for hours watching videos or playing games, so they burn very few calories.
Demo (Body B): Since busy parents often turn to fast food, one effective solution would be for schools to provide healthy lunches and ban sugary drinks on campus. This would ensure that children eat at least one balanced meal every day, regardless of how much time their parents have. To address the problem of screen time, schools and families should work together. Schools could include a short exercise session in every school day, while parents could agree on clear limits for screen use at home. In this way, the hours children spend sitting would gradually be replaced by physical activity.
| Key words in Body A | How Body B echoes them | Linking device |
|---|---|---|
| parents … rely on fast food … little time to cook | Since busy parents often turn to fast food … regardless of how much time their parents have | The Since clause names cause one directly |
| spend much of their free time in front of screens … sit for hours | To address the problem of screen time … the hours children spend sitting would … be replaced | The To address clause names cause two; the last sentence echoes sit |
Notice that the two solutions have different actors (schools; schools + parents), and each solution ends with a “why it works” sentence (ensure that…, In this way…). Each paragraph is about 90 words; with an introduction and a conclusion, the whole essay comes to about 280–300 words.
Continue reading · Part 3 of 3
IELTS Notes in English · Task 2 Structure (post 7 of 9)
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✦ Target Your Future
Some days you practise for hours and the score still does not move. I hope these notes remind you that the setbacks are part of the road: every recording you replayed, every essay you rewrote and every sentence you finally dared to say is progress you have already made.
I wrote this down so the next person can take fewer detours. You do not have to follow my method exactly. Find a rhythm that works for you, rest when you need to, and come back for the next small step.
I hope what you take away is more than a number on a score report: a little more confidence in yourself, and the courage to step a bit closer to the world.
— Ting
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