PTE Reorder Paragraph

‘Re-order Paragraphs’ assesses reading skills. It requires you to be familiar with the organization and links between ideas in academic texts and arrange text boxes in a single correct order.

Number of items2-3
Prompt LengthText up to 150 words
ScoringPartial credit (for each correctly ordered, adjacent pair)
Communicative skills, enabling skills and other traits scoredReading
Subskills testedReading: Identifying the topic, theme or main ideas; identifying supporting points or examples; identifying the relationships between sentences and paragraphs; understanding academic vocabulary; understanding the difference between connotation and denotation; inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words; comprehending explicit and implicit information; comprehending concrete and abstract information; classifying and categorizing information; following a logical or chronological sequence of events.
Strategies
  1. Look for the introductory sentence. It states a fact or idea without any reference to details that must be presented prior to it. It can stand on its own and conveys a complete message.
  2. After finding the topic sentence, identify the supporting sentences. They provide more information, elaborate the general topic or cite examples or instances.
  3. As a cue, look for transition words and phrases such as also, likewise, overall and on the other hand.  Moreover, do not overlook personal pronouns (e.g. she, we) and demonstrative pronouns (e.g. that, those) which replace nouns already mentioned in preceding sentences.
  4. One you have your first arrangement, read the paragraph and check if the ideas flow sequentially and the text is wholly complete and sound.

 

Listen to this Episode of the EasyPTE Podcast:

Click ‘Play’ below to hear the episode. When you’re done, subscribe using the links to the right to get access to all our episodes! Or simply search for ‘EasyPTE’ wherever you get your podcasts.