Listening Skills: Understanding cause and effect

Cause and effect is a common method of organizing ideas. Understanding cause and effect involves understanding why things happen (cause) and what happens as a result (effect). When you figure out why something happens and what happens as a result, this will help you understand better what a speaker is saying.

To figure out the cause-effect relationship, identifying signal words is the most commonly-used strategy.

For causes, some of the signal words and expressions are: because, since, now that, as, as a result of, due to, because of, owing to, on account of, attributed to, one reason for this is, a key factor is, etc.

For effects, signal words and expressions are: consequently, as a result, as a consequence, one consequence of this may be, thus, therefore, hence, so that, accordingly, this may result in, etc.

Sometimes the speaker may use qualifiers such as partly, largely, possibly, certainly, perhaps, definitely, probably, and undoubtedly to qualify cause-and-effect statements. These qualifiers are often used to show the degree of the speaker’s certainty over what he says.

e.g. The accident was probably caused by his careless driving.

Sometimes the cause-effect relationship is implied and not clearly stated, and you need to make inferences about these relationships. One strategy to figure out the cause-effect relationship is by asking questions.

To figure out the effect, you may ask What events happened or What was the result? To figure out the cause or the reason why something happened, you may ask Why did it happen? or What was the cause?

Another strategy to help you identify cause and effect is the use of visual representations. There are three basic patterns to show the cause-effect relationship: the single event, the chain reaction, and the branching tree, as illustrated in the following diagram.

When there is only one cause and one effect, it is a single event.

The single event: A (cause) B (effect)

When a cause creates an effect and that effect turns into a cause and creates another effect, it is called a chain reaction.

The chain reaction: A (cause 1) B (effect 1 / cause 2) C (effect 2)

In a branching tree, one cause creates multiple effects or multiple causes create one effect, and these multiple causes or effects can branch off into other cause and effect patterns.

The branching tree: A (cause 1) B (cause 2) C (cause 3)

D (effect)

In the following exercise you are going to listen to a radio program in which two interviewees talk about the important changes they made in their lives and the reasons why they made such changes. Pay attention to the signal words and expressions that help identify the cause-effect relationship involved in the radio program.