Ordering Sentences in an Information Report
A student's information report on the Wollemi pine has been cut into five sentences, listed here in scrambled order.
A. 'For this reason, the location of the remaining trees is kept secret.' B. 'Until 1994 the Wollemi pine was known only from fossils.' C. 'Fewer than one hundred mature trees now survive in the wild.' D. 'Collectors would pay large sums for a seedling, and a single visitor could carry in a soil-borne disease.' E. 'In that year a bushwalker found a small stand of living trees in a gorge north-west of Sydney.'
Every sentence must be used once. The report is written for a general school audience and must not repeat information.
1. Arrange the five sentences into the most coherent order and justify each link by naming the word or idea that connects it to the sentence before.
Read the worked answer
Order: B – E – C – D – A.
- B first - it establishes the background state of knowledge ('known only from fossils') with no dependence on any other sentence.
- E follows B - 'In that year' can only refer to 1994, the only date given. A time reference with nothing to point back to is the clearest signal of a non-initial sentence.
- C follows E - after the discovery, the reader needs the current situation; 'now' contrasts with the 1994 discovery and shifts the report from history to present risk.
- D follows C - the two named threats only matter because the population is tiny. Reversing C and D would leave the threats unmotivated and the small number stranded at the end.
- A follows D - 'For this reason' points back to a reason, and D is the only sentence offering one (paying collectors, disease).
Test: read the sequence aloud; no sentence uses a referring word ('that year', 'this reason') before its referent appears.
2. Sentence A is the only sentence that could be moved to the end of the paragraph and still make sense. What would be lost by moving it?
Read the worked answer
Moving A to the end would break the back-reference: 'For this reason' would sit after a sentence that gives no reason, so the reader would have to hunt backwards across the paragraph.
What is lost is the explanation of the secrecy. In the current order the paragraph moves: rarity → danger → therefore secrecy. That is a cause-and-effect chain the reader can follow without effort.
It also loses the closing force. A final sentence stating a consequence ('is kept secret') leaves the reader with the significance of the facts; ending on D leaves them with two loose threats and no stated response.
Model answer: the coherence is lost twice over - locally, because 'For this reason' loses its referent, and globally, because the paragraph would end on evidence rather than on what the evidence means.