What is a typical feature of a Cause-and-Effect question?

• A. It asks why something happened or what effect something had.
• B. It asks for the main idea.
• C. It asks for a timeline of events.
• D. It asks to compare two events.

Answer: (A)

Cause-and-effect questions focus on why events happen and what results they produce. They test your ability to trace a reason for an occurrence or the consequence that follows from it. The key feature is that the prompt asks you to explain a cause or identify an effect, rather than identifying the main idea, laying out a timeline, or contrasting two events. So a typical prompt would ask for the reason behind a result or for the result of a particular action. For example, if a passage notes that heavy rain caused floods, the question would be asking you to name why the floods occurred or what effect the rain had on streets and transport.