Word Ordering and Sentence Reconstruction
What word-ordering items test
You are given scrambled words or phrases and must rebuild a correct English sentence. The exam checks basic sentence order (SVO), question formation, adverb placement, phrase chunks, and complex sentences with relative clauses or conjunctions.
Core rules
- Find the verb and decide whether the sentence is a statement, question, or imperative.
- Build chunks, not single words: 'the girl / who is playing the piano' is one subject chunk.
- In questions, put the auxiliary before the subject: 'What did you do...?'
- Place adverbs of frequency before the main verb but after 'be': 'She is always late'; 'She always walks.'
- Keep relative clauses next to the noun they modify.
- Check capitalization and punctuation last.
Worked example
Words: the girl / is / who / my sister / playing / the piano. Reason: The main statement needs a subject and verb. 'The girl' is modified by 'who is playing the piano.' The main verb is 'is,' and 'my sister' is the complement. Result: 'The girl who is playing the piano is my sister.' If you write 'The girl is who playing the piano my sister,' you have split the relative clause and lost the main verb.
Traps
- Forgetting 'do/does/did' in past or present questions.
- Putting 'very' before the noun in the wrong pattern ('a very book' is wrong).
- Splitting a phrasal verb or a relative clause.
- Using Japanese order (subject-object-verb) in English.
- Leaving out the subject in English statements.