• Sentence and paragraph order questions ask you to identify whether a particular sentence is correctly placed within a paragraph, or whether a particular paragraph is correctly placed within a passage.

• The presence of bracketed numbers at the beginning of sentences signals that a question testing sentence order will appear, and the presence of bracketed numbers at the top of each paragraph signals that a question testing paragraph order will appear.

Whenever you see one of these clues, pay close attention to the order of sentences or paragraphs as you read. If you are able to notice - and fix - potential errors before you even look at the questions, you can save yourself a lot of time.

Sentence Order

• When you encounter a sentence order question, you should first determine the topic of the sentence in question.

• Then you should ask yourself whether the sentence follows logically from the previous sentence and connects to the following sentence. If not, reread the paragraph from the beginning, checking to see the flow between sentences and where the sentence in question most likely belongs.

Inserting Sentences

On the SAT, it is also possible that you will be asked to identify where in a passage a particular sentence should be added.

Unlike the Yes/No sentence insertion questions, which normally deal with only a limited section of a passage or paragraph, these questions may ask you to consider various places in multiple paragraphs. Unless you happen to remember the passage exceptionally well, plugging in the sentence into each spot listed in the answer choices and working by process of elimination is usually the most effective way to answer these questions.

To master these types of questions, follow three steps:

1. When you read the sentence to be inserted, take a moment and restate the topic for yourself. This will be the key word or phrase.

2. Then when you go back into the passage to plug in the sentence, check to see if whether the surrounding sentences are consistent with that key word or phrase.

Lastly, eliminate any answers that are inconsistent with that focus.

Dividing Paragraphs

You could also be asked to identify the point at which a paragraph should be divided in two. There are two primary ways to approach these types of questions:

1. You can check the answer choices one by one, looking at each point in the passage and deciding whether a given answer fits in logically with the information before it or begins a new idea

2. You can simply read through the paragraph on your own and identify where it would make the most sense for a break to occur.

Paragraph Order

• Questions about paragraph order are rare and do not appear on every test.

• But it is important to still be comfortable with these types of questions because they can appear on come exams.

• These questions test the same essential skill as those of sentence order, but only a large scale. The first step to solving these questions it to determine whether a particular paragraph is logically placed where it is, or whether it would make more sense elsewhere in the passage.

If you can confidently answer paragraph order questions correctly simple by plugging in the paragraph into the question into the spot indicated, you may feel more comfortable continuing to work this way.

1. Reread the paragraph in question, paying particular attention to the first(topic) sentence. Reiterate the topic for yourself in a word or two, and jot it down quickly

2. Back up and read the last sentence of the previous paragraph, and ask yourself whether it leads naturally into the topic of the next paragraph or is choppy

3. Skip through the content of each passage, looking for a mention of the topic. Once you find a mention, place the passage there.