Question

Which sentence best shows a cause/effect organization of ideas? A) Our last dog never whined or begged for any favors, but this one won't stop whining except when she's asleep. B) The squirrels running in circles outside in the yard drove the dog at the window into a wild barking fit. C) The only way to stop the dog from whining and pacing the living room all day is to let her out at least five minutes during every hour. D) First, the dog will just come up to you and look at you longingly, then she will begin to whimper and touch her paw to your knee pleadingly.

Answer 1

Correct Answer: B) The squirrels running in circles outside in the yard drove the dog at the window into a wild barking fit.

A cause/effect structure, as its name implies, explains why something happened and what happened, with one being the direct consequence of the other. Let's look at each option:

A) Our last dog never whined or begged for any favors, but this one won't stop whining except when she's asleep.

In this sentence, there is no cause/effect structure. In contrast, the speaker is only comparing the behavior of their current dog to their last one.

B) The squirrels running in circles outside in the yard drove the dog at the window into a wild barking fit.

In this case, we can see a clear cause: "The squirrels running in circles outside the yard", and its effect: "drove the dog at the window into a wild barking fit".

C) The only way to stop the dog from whining and pacing the living room all day is to let her out at least five minutes during every hour.

This option may be deceiving, as one would think that the cause, "to let her [the dog] out at least five minutes during every hour." would have the effect of "to stop the dog from whining and pacing the living room all day", but look closely, the sentence doesn't actually show the direct cause/effect structure as sentence B), where one thing directly leads to the other, instead, the speaker is talking about how he/she stops the dog from whining and pacing the living room.

D) First, the dog will just come up to you and look at you longingly, then she will begin to whimper and touch her paw to your knee pleadingly.

This sentence doesn't follow a cause/effect organization of ideas, instead, it just talks about the sequence of actions the dog performs when approaching a person, as the dog coming up to a person and looking longingly doesn't have the effect of the dog beginning to whimper.