Sentence Reordering and Structural Knowledge
Sentence Reordering and Structural Knowledge tests how English sentences are built. You may need to arrange scrambled words into a grammatical sentence, choose a connector, or identify the role of a clause. The exam focuses on junior-high patterns: SVOO, SVOC, infinitives, gerunds, participles, relative clauses, indirect questions, comparatives, and common fixed structures.
Build from the predicate
- Find the verb and decide its pattern. Tell can take SVOO: tell + person + thing. Make can take SVOC: make + object + adjective.
- Put the subject before the verb; English does not allow a question word order inside an indirect question: 'I don't know where he lives,' not 'where does he live.'
- Keep a relative clause immediately after its noun: 'the book that I bought yesterday.'
- Place adverbs of frequency before the main verb but after be: 'She often walks,' 'She is often late.'
- Learn fixed frames: too ... to, enough to, so ... that, not ... until, ask someone to do, want someone to do.
Worked example
Arrange: me / the / tells / teacher / story / us / a / often. Answer: 'The teacher often tells us a story.' Reasoning: the subject is the teacher and the verb is tells. Often is a frequency adverb, so it goes before tells. Tell takes SVOO: tells us a story. The remaining words fit that frame exactly. A common wrong order, 'The teacher tells often us a story,' puts the adverb between the verb and object, which is not standard.
Traps
- Using Japanese order: subject–object–verb.
- Inverting indirect questions: 'I know where is he.'
- Putting a relative clause far from its noun.
- Double connectors: 'because ... so,' 'although ... but.'
- Forgetting that 'to' in 'look forward to' is a preposition, so it takes a gerund: 'looking forward to seeing you.'