Each question gives sentences that, when properly ordered, form a coherent paragraph. Find the order and type it as a sequence of sentence numbers.
Question 1 · Type in the answer (+3 / 0)
The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper order. Type the order as a sequence of numbers, e.g. 2413.
1. The standard steel container changed that by allowing goods to be packed once, at the factory, and then moved between lorry, train and ship as a single sealed unit.
2. Cheaper and more reliable shipping, in turn, made it practical to manufacture goods on one continent and sell them on another.
3. Before the 1950s, loading a cargo ship was painfully slow: dockworkers carried sacks, barrels and crates aboard one at a time.
4. Loading times fell from days to hours, and theft on the docks, once routine, became far harder.
5. Because of this, a vessel could spend as long tied up in port as it did at sea.
Show the solutionSolution
Answer: 35142
Sentence 3 is the only one that introduces the situation without referring back to anything, so it opens the paragraph.
Sentence 5 begins 'Because of this', a consequence of the slow loading in 3, giving the pair 3-5. Sentence 1 then says the container 'changed that', which refers to the long time in port.
Sentence 4 describes the direct effects of the container (faster loading, less theft), so it follows 1. Sentence 2 sums those effects up as 'cheaper and more reliable shipping' and, with 'in turn', draws the wider consequence, so it closes the paragraph.
Placing 1 straight after 3 fails because 5's 'Because of this' would then blame the container for ships sitting in port.
Question 2 · Type in the answer (+3 / 0)
The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper order. Type the order as a sequence of numbers, e.g. 2413.
1. Many scientists were sceptical, finding it hard to believe that an insect could encode both direction and distance in a single gesture.
2. For centuries, beekeepers had noticed that a forager returning to the hive would perform an odd, repetitive dance on the comb.
3. Decades of experiments eventually vindicated him, and in 1973 he shared the Nobel Prize for the work.
4. The angle of the dance's straight run, he argued, indicated the direction of a food source relative to the sun, while its duration indicated the distance.
5. It was the Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch who finally proposed what the movement meant.
Show the solutionSolution
Answer: 25413
Sentence 2 introduces the dance with no back-reference, so it opens. Sentence 5 refers to 'the movement' and says someone 'finally' explained it, so 2-5 is a mandatory pair.
Sentence 4 uses 'he argued' and spells out the theory, so it needs von Frisch to have been named in 5: 5-4.
Sentence 1's scepticism is about encoding 'both direction and distance', ideas first introduced in 4, so 4-1. Sentence 3's 'eventually vindicated him' answers that scepticism, so it comes last.
Putting 3 before 1 breaks the chronology: the doubters must come before the vindication.
Question 3 · Type in the answer (+3 / 0)
The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper order. Type the order as a sequence of numbers, e.g. 2413.
1. Enterprising residents, however, soon began breeding cobras so that they could kill them and claim the reward.
2. Whether or not the tale is true, economists use it to show how a reward tied to a measurable target can end up encouraging the very behaviour it was meant to stop.
3. At first the scheme seemed to work, as residents brought in carcass after carcass.
4. According to a widely told story, colonial officials in Delhi once tried to reduce the number of cobras in the city by paying a bounty for every dead snake.
5. When the officials discovered this and scrapped the bounty, the breeders released their now worthless snakes, leaving the city with more cobras than before.
Show the solutionSolution
Answer: 43152
Sentence 4 sets up the story ('According to a widely told story') and introduces the bounty, so it opens. Sentence 2 cannot open: 'the tale' needs a story already told.
Sentence 3 refers to 'the scheme' and its early success with 'At first', so 4-3. Sentence 1's 'however' and 'soon' mark the turn after that early success, so 3-1.
Sentence 5's 'discovered this' refers to the breeding in 1, so 1-5. Sentence 2 steps back from the story to draw the lesson, so it closes: 43152.
The tempting 4-1-3 fails because 'At first' cannot come after the scheme has already been gamed.
Question 4 · Type in the answer (+3 / 0)
The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper order. Type the order as a sequence of numbers, e.g. 2413.
1. The likely reason is that writing by hand is too slow to capture every word, so these students must summarise as they go, and summarising forces them to process what they hear.
2. Intuitively, this ought to give them an advantage, since a fuller record leaves more material to revise from.
3. Students who type lecture notes on a laptop usually record far more words than those who write by hand.
4. Yet some studies have found that students who write by hand understand lectures better, especially when tested on concepts rather than facts.
Show the solutionSolution
Answer: 3241
Sentence 3 states the basic observation and refers to nothing earlier, so it opens.
Sentence 2's 'this' (recording more words) and 'them' (the typists) point back to 3, so 3-2.
Sentence 4 opens with 'Yet', overturning the expected advantage in 2, so 2-4. Sentence 1 gives 'the likely reason' for the finding in 4 and its 'these students' are the hand-writers named there, so it closes.
Trying 3-4-2 fails: after 4, the 'them' in 2 would refer to the hand-writers, who do not record more words.
Question 5 · Type in the answer (+3 / 0)
The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper order. Type the order as a sequence of numbers, e.g. 2413.
1. For travellers on horseback, such small differences hardly mattered.
2. To solve the problem, railway companies began running all their services on a single standard time, regardless of what the local clocks said.
3. Until the nineteenth century, most towns set their clocks by the sun, so noon in one town might fall several minutes before noon in a town to its west.
4. Towns gradually followed suit, and what had begun as a convenience for train operators became the way the whole country told the time.
5. The railways changed this, because a timetable is useless if every station along the line keeps a different time.
Show the solutionSolution
Answer: 31524
Sentence 3 describes the original situation and is self-contained, so it opens. Sentence 1's 'such small differences' needs the minutes-apart noons of 3: 3-1.
Sentence 5's 'changed this' contrasts the railways with the horseback era in 1, so 1-5. Placing 5 before 1 would jump back in time after the railways had arrived.
Sentence 2's 'the problem' is the clash of station times raised in 5, so 5-2, and sentence 4's 'followed suit' means copying the railways' standard time in 2, so 4 closes: 31524.
Full worked solution
Find the opener first: a sentence that introduces the subject and does not depend on anything earlier. Sentences beginning with 'this', 'such', 'however', 'yet' or 'in turn' almost never open.
Lock in mandatory pairs. A pronoun or a phrase such as 'the scheme' or 'the problem' must come after the sentence that introduces what it refers to.
Use connectors to fix direction: 'Yet' and 'however' turn against the sentence before, 'because of this' and 'as a result' follow a cause, and 'in turn' builds on an effect already stated.
Check the timeline. Words such as 'at first', 'soon', 'eventually' and 'until' put events in order, and a story usually moves forward in time.
Before typing the answer, read your order through once. If any back-reference points to a sentence that has not appeared yet, the order is wrong.