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Cause and Effect 4625 Views
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Description:
Cause: You watch this video. Effect: You’ll be our best friend 4EVA. (We promise we don’t say that to everybody.)
Transcript
- 00:00
Edited at https://subtitletools.com
- 00:08
Cause and Effect, a la Shmoop. Just because one thing happens after another…[domino slips on banana peel]
- 00:13
…doesn’t necessarily mean that the first thing caused the second.
- 00:21
Your friends keep trying to tell you that…
- 00:23
…but you refuse to stop intentionally spilling grape juice on the carpet until the Red Sox
Full Transcript
- 00:28
lose. On the other hand, if you spill grape juice [guy in living room watches tv with friends and spills juice]
- 00:32
on one of the actual Red Sox outfielders…
- 00:35
...then there may actually be some cause and effect at play. [guy spills juice on baseball player]
- 00:41
Using cause and effect within an essay can be a great way to show how a situation has
- 00:44
progressed…[businessman build sky scraper]
- 00:47
…or regressed. [sky scraper gets torn down]
- 00:53
By showing your reader how a war caused a depression…[military tank, people in line for the dole]
- 00:57
…or how the shifting of plates at the Earth’s surface causes earthquakes…[globe switches pasta plates around on a table and loses an eye]
- 01:02
…a reader can start to make connections they might not have made…
- 01:07
… if all you had done is dump a bunch of random facts in their lap. [guy reading a book on the couch, words drop in lap]
- 01:15
Examining cause and effect allows us to think outside the events themselves and contemplate
- 01:20
their context.
- 01:22
However, be careful not to confuse causation with correlation.
- 01:29
Just because two things are related…
- 01:31
…it doesn’t mean that one caused the other.
- 01:36
The last three times your Uncle Bertrand has come to visit…
- 01:42
…there’s been a full moon. [Uncle Berty opens door with full moon outside]
- 01:43
But unless Uncle Bertie is seeking shelter to avoid one of his… “episodes”…[Uncle turns into werewolf]
- 01:48
…it’s probably just an odd coincidence. Cause and effect is only when one thing happens
- 01:58
and a second thing happens as a direct result of the first thing.
- 02:03
Like when your mom caught Uncle Bertrand going through the trash… so she sent him home.
- 02:10
Or when Uncle Bertrand tore up the living room carpet… so your mom made him pay to
- 02:15
get it fixed.
- 02:16
Or when one of your neighbors dropped by and Uncle Bertrand barked ferociously at him…
- 02:21
so your mom fit him with a choke collar. Hm. Maybe there is something to that whole
- 02:28
“full moon” thing. [Uncle pees on fire hydrant]
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