reading a cause-and- effect article

92 Exposition: Examining Causes and EffectsChapter 3

Reading Workshop

R E A D I N G S K I L L

R E A D I N G F O C U S

W H AT ’ SA H E A D ?

In this section, you willread a newspaper arti-cle and learn how to

� infer causes andeffects

� analyze cause-and-effect patterns

Reading a Cause-and-Effect Article

“Fire! Fire!” someone yells. What do you do? You move fast

because you know that fires can be dangerous and destructive.

You have seen, in newspapers and on television, dramatic images of raging

fires destroying buildings or forests. Keep in mind, however, that although

news stories typically focus on the negative effects of fire, fires can also

have positive effects. The article on the next page, “Yellowstone Makes a

Triumphant Return Ten Years After Fires,” describes the positive effects

that the massive forest fires of 1988 had on Yellowstone National Park.

Preparing to Read

Inferring Causes and Effects Often when you read, you recognizea cause-and-effect relationship because the writer directly states that rela-tionship. At other times, the relationships are less obvious, and you have tomake an inference—an educated guess based on your own knowledge andexperience—about the causes or the effects. The article on the next pagedeals with several cause-and-effect relationships. The writer directly statessome; others are not as obvious.

Cause-and-Effect Structure Writers organize their explanations ofcause-and-effect relationships by focusing on causes, on effects, or oncausal chains. (Causal chains begin with the first cause and follow with aseries of intermediate actions or events to the final effect.) For example, anessay focusing on causes identifies and explains several causes of oneeffect. An essay focusing on effects identifies and explains several effectsresulting from one cause. An essay focusing on a casual chain identifiesand explains multiple causes and effects. As you read the following article,see if you can tell whether the author focuses on causes, on effects, or on acausal chain.

Reading Workshop

Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

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The following article from the Austin American-Statesmandescribes the effects that the immense forest fires of 1988 hadon the wild lands of Yellowstone National Park. As you read,jot down answers to the numbered active-reading questions.

Yellowstone Makes a Triumphant Return Ten Years After Fires

B Y B R U C E B A B B I T T

What a difference a decademakes. Ten years ago

this month, YellowstoneNational Park was a sea offlames. Some of the largestwildfires in U.S. history sweptrestlessly across the park’smagnificent terrain, incinerat-ing forests, threatening historicbuildings. The news media andpoliticians fanned the flameseven higher. Yellowstone, theysaid, was devastated.

Night after night, horrificimages of ash and flame flashedacross America’s TV screens.One evening, after showing anenormous expanse of black-ened forest, network newsanchor Tom Brokaw solemnlyconcluded: “This is what’s left ofYellowstone tonight.”

But guess what? Fire didn’tdestroy Yellowstone. Ten years

later, we realize fire had theopposite effect. Fire rejuve-nated Yellowstone. Elk andother wildlife are healthy.Tourism is thriving. Bio-diversity is booming. Newforests are rising from theashes of old ones. The recov-ery is so dramatic it deserves acloser look.

First, a bit of background:The 1988 fires were gigantic.They swept over roughly793,000 of Yellowstone’s 2.2million acres—one third of thepark. Some were lightning-caused; others were of humanorigin. The $120 million fire-fighting effort amassed againstthem has been called thelargest in U.S. history. Theheroic work saved many keystructures. But in the wildlands, it made almost no differ-ence. What put Yellowstone’s

fires out was not retardant-dropping planes or armies offirefighters on the ground. Itwas a quarter inch of autumnrain.

In July and August, as firesraged across the park, businessowners fumed. Our future isruined, they said. Tourism isdead. But today, tourism isvery much alive. Yellowstonehas set numerous visitationrecords since 1988. Fire hasnot repelled tourists; it hasattracted them—just as itattracts many species ofwildlife. Ten years later, thenumber one question asked ofYellowstone naturalists re-mains “What are the effects ofthe fires?”

The answer is simple: Thefires were therapeutic. Since1988, some seventy scientificresearch projects have looked

93Reading Workshop

2. What caused the fires?

1. As the fires raged, what long-term consequencesdid people expect?


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at various aspects of theYellowstone fires. Not one hasconcluded the fires were harm-ful. That sounds too good to betrue. But it is. The science isthere to prove it.

Come to Yellowstone thissummer and see for yourself.Pull off the road near Ice Lake,east of the Norris GeyserBasin. Here the fire burnedespecially savagely. Hundredsof thousands, perhaps millions,of mature lodgepole pine treeswere destroyed. But today, theforest floor is a sea of green—knee-high lodgepoles planted,literally, by the fires of 1988.

Yellowstone’s lodgepoleforest is a place of mystery. Inorder to live, it must first die. Itmust burn. The fire that sweptthrough here worked anancient magic: It scorchedlodgepole cones, melted theirsticky resin, and freed theseeds locked inside. Withinminutes, a new forest wasplanted.

By suppressing wildfire, asSmokey Bear has taught us todo, we interrupt nature’scycles. We rob our westernforests of something they need

desperately. We steal their sea-son of rebirth. Without fire,pine forests grow senile, proneto disease, and unnaturallythick. There are lessons inthese lodgepoles. Too muchprotection is no virtue. We canharm what we try to save. I’mnot suggesting that we worshipfire—that we let it run wildoutside of natural parks andwilderness areas. But we canrespect its wisdom. We cantreat it, when possible, as anally, not an enemy, and use itmore frequently under con-trolled conditions to protectcommunities and make forestshealthier.

Look closely around IceLake and you will almostsurely see something else:wildlife. Bison, elk, mule deer,white-tailed deer, bighornsheep, and mountain goatshave all prospered since 1988.Just as fire rejuvenated lodge-poles, so, too, did it revitalizeplants that grazing animals eat.Walt Disney got it wrong:Bambi and his forest friendshave nothing to fear—andmuch to gain—from fire.

If you’re lucky, you mayalso see Yellowstone’s king ofbeasts: the grizzly bear. To agrizzly, wildfire is a meal ticket.Fires kill trees, which fall tothe ground and fill up withinsects: grizzly sushi. Othersenjoy the feast, too. Before1988, three-toed woodpeckerswere almost nonexistent inYellowstone. After 1988, oneornithologist spotted thirty inone day. But dead lodgepolesare more than lunch counters;they are housing opportunities,home sites for mountain blue-birds, tree swallows, and other“cavity-nesting” birds andmammals.

Ten years ago, the newsmedia said fire “blackened”Yellowstone. Today, we knowthe reverse is true. Fire haspainted the park brighter,added color and texture to itsecosystem, and increased thediversity and abundance of itsspecies. As Yellowstone scien-tist John Varley put it recently,“The biodiversity story overthe past ten years has been fascinating. Biodiversity hasgone through a revolution atYellowstone.”

3. What is one effect ofthe Yellowstone fires?

4. What conclusion doesthe writer draw aboutforest fires?

5. What animals benefitfrom fallen trees?

94 Exposition: Examining Causes and EffectsChapter 3 Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

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Inferring Causes and Effects

Making a Connection When you read that one action or event isthe result of another action or event, you are reading about a cause-and-effect relationship. A cause makes something happen; an effect is whathappens as a result of that cause. The link between cause and effect cansometimes be very obvious; at other times you may be required to makean educated guess about the connection.

When writers want to make cause-and-effect relationships very obvi-ous for the reader, they do so with clue words that signal the cause-and-effect relationship. The Yellowstone article, for example, notes that some ofthe fires were “lightning-caused.” The relationship between lightning andthe fires is very clearly signaled by the word caused. A few more words andphrases that can signal cause-and-effect relationships are

accordingly because effect in order that since

affect cause for reason therefore

as a result consequently if . . . then results in why

At times a writer only hints at a cause-and-effect relationship. In suchcases, you will have to combine details in the text with your own knowl-edge and experience to make an educated guess about a cause-and-effectrelationship. When you make an educated guess about probable causes orprobable effects, you are inferring the presence of a cause-and-effect rela-tionship that the writer has implied. For example, in “Yellowstone Makes a

95Reading Workshop

First Thoughts on Your Reading

Work with a partner to answer the following questions about“Yellowstone Makes a Triumphant Return.” Jot down youranswers on a sheet of paper.

1. The first two paragraphs of the article describe the fire anddevastation of 1988. What reaction do you think the writeris trying to provoke in his readers?

2. Who do you think was the original intended audience forthis article? Was it the general public? park service workers?Yellowstone business owners? What makes you think yourchoice is right?

3. What effect do you think the lessons taught by the 1988Yellowstone fires will have on future conservation efforts?

R E A D I N G S K I L L

Be careful.Sometimes clue wordsand phrases have usesunrelated to cause-and-effect relationships, as inthe sentences, “His causeis just” or “She has notvisited since she was ababy.”

T I P


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Triumphant Return Ten Years After Fires,” the writer states that thoughsome fires were caused by lightning, “others were of human origin.” Thewriter assumes that you are familiar enough with forest fires to infer whatthe “human” causes might have been: campers leaving a campfire un-attended or out of control, or children playing with matches, for example.


You can also discover cause-and-effect relationships by paying carefulattention to the verbs the writer uses. Certain verbs are causative verbs—verbs that express cause-and-effect relationships. For example, here is asentence from the Yellowstone article: Fire rejuvenated Yellowstone. In thissentence, rejuvenated is a causative verb meaning “to make seem new orfresh again.” The cause-and-effect relationship is built into the verb reju-venated. Fire is the cause; making Yellowstone seem new or fresh again isthe effect of fire. If you are unsure whether a verb is a causative verb, lookit up in a dictionary to see whether the verb describes an effect one thinghas on another. Here are some other common causative verbs:

STEP 1 Ask yourself, “What happens in the passage?” (What is theeffect?) Forests become physically deteriorated, likely to contract dis-eases, and denser than they would naturally.

STEP 2 Ask, “Why does it happen?” (What is the cause?) The lack of fire.STEP 3 Rewrite the passage using an explicit cause-and-effect signal

word like cause, effect, or because. Notice that the cause is lack of fire;the effect is that the pine forests grow senile, prone to disease, andunnaturally thick. I can infer that the lack of fires causes pine foreststo grow senile, prone to disease, and unnaturally thick.

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You can use the following steps to infer, or make an educated guessabout, implied cause-and-effect relationships. The process is modeledfor you using a sentence from the article about the Yellowstone fires.

Example:“Without fire, pine forests grow senile, prone to disease, and unnatu-rally thick.”

THINKING ITTHINKING ITTHROUGHTHROUGH

THINKING ITTHINKING ITTHROUGHTHROUGH Inferring Causes and Effects

contract destroy expand makecreate dissolve inflate producedarken energize lighten sharpen


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97Reading Workshop

Identifying Implied Causes and Effects

Using the steps in Thinking It Through, identify the cause-and-effectrelationships in the following passages from the reading selection. Itmay not be necessary to go through every step for every passage.

1. But today, the forest floor is a sea of green—knee-high lodgepolesplanted, literally, by the fires of 1988.

2. What put Yellowstone’s fires out was not retardant-dropping planesor armies of firefighters on the ground. It was a quarter inch ofautumn rain.

3. Fire has not repelled tourists; it has attracted them—just as it attractsmany species of wildlife.

4. Before 1988, three-toed woodpeckers were almost nonexistent inYellowstone. After 1988, one ornithologist spotted thirty in one day.

5. Just as fire rejuvenated lodgepoles, so, too, did it revitalize plantsthat grazing animals eat.

YOURTURNYOURTURN 22

Cause-and-Effect Structure

I’m Beginning to Sense a Pattern . . . Newton’s third law ofmotion says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.The “butterfly” effect, an example of the chaos theory of physics, states thatthe movement of a butterfly wing somewhere in China can cause a chainreaction of events that affects the weather in California weeks later. Withall the actions and “equal and opposite” reactions going on in the world,how can anyone keep up with them? How can you, as a reader, make senseof it all?

Here is one way: try to determine the writer’s organizational pattern.For causal analysis, writers generally start with one of three patterns:

� patterns that emphasize causes

� patterns that emphasize effects

� patterns that trace a causal chain

From these simple organizational patterns, writers often develop morecomplex patterns to describe more complex cause-and-effect relation-ships. These composite patterns show a mixture of two or more of thesimple patterns. By identifying the organizational pattern a writer uses,you will be better able to understand and follow the cause-and-effect rela-tionships the writer explains.

R E A D I N G F O C U S


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cause

cause

cause

Pattern 1: Focus on Causes Some pieces of writing focus onexplaining what has caused a certain event to happen. Writers usually beginthese pieces by presenting a clearly observed effect; then, they proceed toanalyze the causes that have led to the effect. Sometimes these causes are obvious and easily explained. At other times, a writer will present only possi-ble causes, because no one is certain of the exact reasons for the effect.

If a piece you are reading focuses on causes, you are likely to find aneffect presented in the introductory paragraph as part of the thesis state-ment. Then, the body paragraphs will explain the causes of the effect.

The following diagram illustrates an example of a “focus on causes”organizational pattern. One cause, drought conditions, is inferred.


Sometimes awriter discusses under-lying causes in ananalysis. For example,an obvious cause of acar wreck might be an equipment malfunc-tion, while the under-lying cause might beneglected maintenance.

T I P

Pattern 2: Focus on Effects Sometimes a writer describes a causeand analyzes its effects. If the writer is discussing a recent situation, witheffects not yet observed, the writer may speculate about possible effects.

In a piece that focuses on effects, you will likely find the cause pre-sented as part of the thesis statement. The effects that result from the causewill be the topics of the piece’s body paragraphs. Much of the Yellowstonearticle’s focus was on the effects of the fire. The following illustrationshows the pattern in which some of the effects are presented in the article.

effect Yellowstonefires

lightning

droughtconditions

humancarelessness

property damage

destruction of forests

$120 million fire-fighting effort

effect

effect

effect

causeYellowstone

fires


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99Reading Workshop

It is important for you as a reader to pay close attention to whether thewriter of an article has pointed out both long-term and short-term causesand effects. Short-term effects are usually the most immediately identifi-able, but long-term effects are often the most important. For example, asthe article on the Yellowstone fires points out, most people recognized onlythe short-term destruction caused by the fires. Some saw a once beautifulYellowstone National Park devastated by fire. Others saw an end to busi-nesses that thrived on tourism. However, the long-term positive effects ofrejuvenation turned out to be more important (and more surprising),although several years passed before they became obvious. The diagrambelow illustrates both the long- and short-term effects.

Pattern 3: Causal Chain A causal chain is like a row of topplingdominoes—one event causing another, repeated until a final effect isreached. The event that begins a causal chain—known as the initialcause—is followed by an effect that becomes the cause of another effect.This process is repeated until the final effect—the effect that ends thechain—is reached. Each intermediate (in-between) cause or effect is like alink in a chain. Though one link may not be as important or as strong asthe other links, they are all necessary to the chain. If just one of these inter-mediate causes were absent, the final effect would not be reached.

Typically, you will find an initial cause stated in the thesis of an arti-cle. Within the body of the article, you will then read explanations of eachlink in the chain of events through the final effect. In the Yellowstone arti-cle, you probably noticed that the writer discussed a few causal chains.This diagram shows part of a causal chain from that article.

attract insectsfire

intermediatecause/effect

attract insect-eating animals

intermediatecause/effectinitial cause final effect

cause short-term effect long-term effect

rejuvenationdestruction

fallen trees

Yellowstonefires


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Pattern 4: The Composite Pattern When you read a causal analy-sis, you may not always find a single organizational pattern that covers allthe information given. A situation or process may be too complicated tobe effectively described using a simple pattern. The following diagramillustrates a composite cause-and-effect pattern that explains the relation-ship between causes and effects in a volcanic eruption.

animals die

lava buildup

shifting tectonic plates

volcanic eruption

plants die

food shortage

release of ash into

atmosphere

ash blocks UV rays

lava spews from crater

path ofdestruction


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101Reading Workshop

Analyzing Cause-and-Effect Structure

To analyze the complex cause-and-effect relationships in “YellowstoneMakes a Triumphant Return,” redraw and fill in the causal-chain dia-gram below. Draw a red circle around the initial cause, green circlesaround the intermediate causes, and a blue circle around the finaleffect. Identify at least one long-term and one short-term effect.

YOURTURNYOURTURN 33

Yellowstone fires

trees fall

(hint: birds)

happy Yellowstone

business owners

revitalize other plants

(hint: biodiversity)

(hint: insects)


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ACTICEACTICEPRPR


Suffix

–ate

–ation

–en

–fic

–ic

–ize

Meaning

become, cause

the result of ____ing

cause to be, become

making, causing

caused by

make, cause to be

Example

activate

summation

cheapen

horrific

acidic; choleric

terrorize

STEP 1 Write the word down, but put a long dash between the root and thesuffix. Suppose you needed to figure out the meaning of the word compila-tion. compil—ation

STEP 2 Write down a known word that has the same suffix. relaxationSTEP 3 Write down everything you know about the known word and about

the suffix. Relaxation means taking a break, or relaxing. Based on the mean-ing of the suffix –ation, it means “the result of relaxing.”

STEP 4 Now, use what you know to make an inference—an educatedguess—about the definition of the unfamiliar word. If relaxation is theresult of relaxing, then compilation must be the result of compiling. Forexample, when a music group puts out a compilation disc, it must be theresult of compiling, or gathering together, all their best songs.Be careful, though; many suffixes have multiple meanings. For example, –iccan also mean “like,” as in the word angelic.

Use these steps to figure out the meanings of many words with suffixes.


THINKING ITTHINKING ITTHROUGHTHROUGH Using Suffixes

MINI-LESSONLESSON

MINI-LESSONLESSON VOCABULARYVOCABULARY

Suffixes

�

�

�

�

1. horrific 4. terrific

2. revitalize 5. blacken

3. rejuvenate

Using the steps in Thinking It Through, above, write defini-tions for the words at right. Then, look up the words in adictionary to check the accuracy of your definitions.

When you read complicated cause-and-effectexplanations like Bruce Babbitt’s article on theYellowstone fires of 1988, you might run intosome unfamiliar words. One way to prepareyourself to identify the meanings of unfamil-iar words is to learn some basic suffixes. A suf-fix, a word part of one or more syllables, isadded to the end of a word to alter its mean-ing or to change its part of speech. The suffixesin the chart at right often act as indicators ofchanges, causes, or effects.


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Reading tests often measure your ability toinfer, or make an educated guess about, causesor effects not directly stated in a reading pas-sage. Because inference reading passages willnot include clue words or phrases such asbecause or as a result, you must figure out thecause-and-effect relationship within themyourself.

Here is a typical reading passage and testquestion:

Damage by pollution to ecosystems canbe slow but sure. Acid rain, for instance,changes the quality of the water in pondsand streams. When frogs and toads layeggs in acidic water, fewer of their off-spring reach maturity. When there arefewer frogs and toads, the insect popula-

tion explodes. The insects, in turn, feedon plants and crops, which may promptfarmers and gardeners to use more pesti-cides. These pesticides can eventually getwashed by rain into waterways, wherethey might create further problems.

1. From this paragraph, what can you inferabout the effects of frogs and toads ontheir ecosystems?

A. American factories are the largest causeof acid rain.

B. Frogs and toads help to keep insect populations down.

C. Fish, which eat tadpoles, suffer whenfrog and toad populations decline.

D. Frogs and toads eat plants and crops.

103Reading Workshop

MINI-LESSONLESSON

MINI-LESSONLESSON TEST TAKINGTEST TAKING

Inferring Causes and Effects

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STEP 1 Skim the passage once for a general understanding; then re-read itcarefully. Keep in mind that most of these questions are designed to measureyour reading comprehension, not your reading speed.

STEP 2 Locate key words and phrases in the sample answers that match similar words and phrases in the reading passage. Answers A and C sharefew key words with the reading passage. The reading passage does not men-tion factories or fish. Answers B and D contain key words which are in thereading passage.

STEP 3 Apply your knowledge to the remaining answers. The passage statesthat insects (not frogs and toads) eat plants and crops, so D is wrong. Yourknowledge that frogs and toads eat large numbers of insects confirms that Bis correct.

Use the following steps to answer cause-and-effect inference test questions likethe sample question above.


THINKING ITTHINKING ITTHROUGHTHROUGH Inferring Causes and Effects


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reading a cause-and- effect article

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