Learn English Locally,

Apply It Worldwide!

Enjoy Regular Practice

Cause and Effect

Here I shall teach you the concept of CAUSE and EFFECT in 'communicative grammar’. Again, this type of grammar is for speaking English. In other words, you decide what it is that you want to say and this type of grammar will give you the model of how to say it. Do you like the idea?

OK - So, what is 'CAUSE and EFFECT'?

Even kids will understand that if something happens (CAUSE), then something else will happen as a result (EFFECT), and so it goes... if that happens, then something else happens as a result and so on...

Two ways of seeing it:

- Something happened BECAUSE OF ..... a cause or another: "They went home because her mother was ill."

- This or that will MAKE/CAUSE something else to happen: "If you water the plants regularly, they will grow fast."

How do you express your ideas?

In answering the question ‘why?’, one can indicate cause or reason by using:

1) An adverbial because-clause

This is probably the first expression children learn at school, or catch from their parents: "... because I say so!". However, I would advise you to reduce its use to the minimum, if you can.

"[The driver was angry] [(because) two passengers were late.]"

"[I bought the book] [(because) it is on my reading list.]"

"[(Because) he broke his arm], [he had to be hospitalised for 2 weeks!]"

2) A prepositional phrase

  • because of
  • on account of
  • from / out of

Note how you don't have a clause here, to express the cause: the second part doesn't have a verb, so it's not a sentence/clause - it's a noun, with a preposition in front of it.

The expressions 'from', and 'out of' are used mainly to express motive, i.e. psychological cause

"He couldn’t get to work in time because of a flat tire on the way."

"She couldn't sleep the whole night because of her worries!"

"They went to the seaside on holiday, on account of having earned a good bonus for the previous term."

"He slapped me, out of frustration."

"He went to visit his grandmother in the hospital, not from/out of necessity, but from/out of a sense of duty."

3) Other prepositions

Sometimes we express cause by using

  • 'for' (mainly + nouns of feeling),
  • 'with'
  • 'through'

"She jumped for joy."

"He missed two races through injury."

"Kids make mistakes through ignorance - they need to keep learning."

"She rushed to the train station, with great anticipation."

Now do an exercise using what you've learned so far:

Please note that all fields followed by an asterisk must be filled in.

English Corner Weekly E-zine

Packed with knowledge, published on Tuesdays.

Get yours here!

Enter your email:
Enter your name:
Then

Don't worry — your e-mail address is totally secure.
I promise to use it only to send you English Corner E-zine.

Our Archives:

Pronunciation

Our lessons in the names and sounds of letters, short & long vowel sounds, CVCs, CCVCs, CVCCs, sight words, vowel and consonant contrasts, etc.

Reading

Our lessons will help increase your vocabulary, word recognition, find meaning in context, skills for TOEFL tests and other games, for fun.

Writing

Here we shall build some lessons to help you improve your writing skills.

Grammar

Lots of lessons: cause & effect, comparisons, linking signals, relative clauses, presenting information, expressing emotions and grammar games, of course. We had more lessons on: intensifying adverbs and phrasal verbs, expressing various concepts such as addition, exception, restriction and ambiguity. Lately we started some exercises: likes/dislikes, frequency adverbs (twice), verb tenses, etc.

Website Building

Learn how to build a website, by using the SBI! system - start from the basics, developing a site concept and a niche, supply and demand, learn about profitability and monetization, payment processing, register domain, website structure and content as a pyramid. Also learn about the tools I'm using to build this website. We also covered how to build traffic, working with search engines, building a good system of inbound links, using social marketing and blogs with the SBI system, how to use Socialize It and Form Build It, how to publish an e-zine and how to build a social network in your niche. 

Our Weekly Game

We looked at a few games by now: Countable & uncountable nouns, Free Rice, Name That Thing, Spell It, Spelloween, the Phrasal Verbs Game, Preposition Desert, The Sentence Game, Word Confusion, Word Wangling, Buzzing Bees, and The Verb Viper Game.

Be prepared to play and learn  more pretty soon.