PTE Reorder Paragraphs overview

PTE Re-order paragraphs is part of the PTE Reading task, in this article we will provide you a brief guide on how to approach this question the right way. For exercise, please visit our quiz page to practice.

What to expect

When you start attempting this question your first goal should be to identify the leading paragraph. This is often easy to do as the leading paragraph has some unique characteristics. First of all, the leading paragraph introduces a concept or theme of the whole text. It is independent and can stand alone as a sentence, which means it does not require other paragraphs or sentences to complete its meaning.

Once you have found the leading paragraph, you should look for the next paragraph. There are two things to consider. First, the second paragraph should add information to what the first paragraph introduced. Second, the paragraph should have a link with something in the previous paragraph. For example, if the first paragraph talks about the general concept of Global Warming, the second paragraph can discuss a specific incident related to it.

You should then repeat the same process for subsequent paragraphs. Ask yourself these questions?

Once you have arranged all paragraphs in the right order, make sure you read them again. Sometimes by proof reading you will feel that some paragraphs can be arranged in a different sequence. Do it and see how it impacts the meaning of the whole text.

At times you will be confused between different paragraphs. In that case you should put each paragraph in the position one by one and see how it effects the order of other paragraphs and the meaning of the text.

How you are scored

How to preapre PTE Reorder Paragraphs for high score?

Read the full text

You are given jumbled text and need to reorder them in a paragraph that makes logical sense. Most of the sentences given will have a structure and a chronology i.e. sequence of events that happen one after the other. Your goal is to simply identify this.

Read all the text boxes quickly before you start re-ordering them, and use the keywords to form an overall idea of what the original text is about.

Find the topic sentence first

Start with the first sentence as this is the most easily to identify. It is usually a clear statement about the topic, and all the other sentences are related in some way to this sentence. This is the sentence that will have the overall topic idea/statement within it.

The first sentence can stand alone; it does not begin with a linker or a pronoun that refers to something or someone (e.g., ‘he’ or ‘this’), nor does it depend on any other sentences given there (so it should not begin with therefore, besides, hence etc.).

Note any paragraphs that begin with conjunctions such as However, Nevertheless, But, Also, Furthermore, Therefore, Whereas, Similarly, Alternatively, and so on. Such sentences do not usually go first. Additionally, those paragraphs that refer back to text in a previous paragraph and contain pronouns referring to someone (e.g., he, she, his, her, himself, herself, them, they, themselves, those) or something (it), they cannot be the leading sentences. Any other clues that related to sequences (Another, firstly, secondly, finally, next, subsequent, following, in addition, too) should be noted as they will probably not be the first sentence.

Even articles can help you identify the first sentence to some extent. Sentences that contain definite article “the” are almost never the first sentence except some phrases as below.

“The” is a definite article, whereas “A” and “An” are indefinite articles. “The” is used to denote something or someone specific or when the person or thing that has been introduced already. “A” or “An” are used while introducing something for the first time and also for stating general facts.

Below are some reorder techniques to follow, which can help you to arrange sentences in logical order.

We are going to explain “Full name - Partial name” strategy here in detail. If there are two sentences, one covers the full name of a person whereas another refers the same person by the partial name, or simply refer the person by “he, she, him, her, etc.” we would know the sentence with full name should come first.

Finally, you are expected to make stops and pauses. This is because pauses carry great power and enable you to speak with a purpose, listening to a speech without any pause is like reading a paragraph without any punctuation, which is likely to cause poor pronunciation score. So you need to make tiny pauses when you encounter punctuation marks like comma and full stop. The pause for a full stop should be slightly longer than that for a comma.

Sample Reorder Paragraphs

Explanation

First, you need to find the independent/starting sentence, which is the sentence that doesn't contain any discourse markers and proper nouns.

With that being said, let's look at which sentence(s) can or can't be considered as independent /starting sentence.

a) contains “prevent such abuses”, b) contains “These markets”, c) contains “such legislation” e) contains proper noun “he was able to”. Hence we can rule out all of aforementioned sentences and starting sentence is d)

we can see in a), it mentions “there had been some legislation to prevent such abuses”, from which we can extrapolate the sentence before a) must have mentioned some type of abuses. After reading through all sentences, it is clear that b) is the only sentence that covers some sort of abuses “enterprises are against the interests of both workers and consumers.” Hence it should be b) a)

so d) b) a)

Finally, we have c) and e) left, as mentioned above, the sentence with full name should come before those with partial name and “he” or “she”, hence we can conclude that e) should come after c) even without reading the content thoroughly (although we don’t recommend test takers to skip any sentence for Paragraph Reorders).

Hence the answer is d) b) a) c) e)