ACT Preparation / Unit 6 ACT 0512 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Where Does the Sentence Belong?
The idea
When a question asks where a sentence should be placed, work in three steps. First, find the sentence's backward links: pronouns and pointing words, repeated names, and transitions that require something before them. Second, find its forward links: anything it introduces that a later sentence picks up. Third, test each proposed position by reading the sentences around it: the right position satisfies both links, so that what the sentence points to comes before it, and what it introduces comes after.
In practice
Worked example: the sentence to place is "This change cut the wait to ten minutes." In the paragraph, sentence one says riders once waited forty minutes for a bus, sentence two says the city doubled the number of buses on the route, and sentence three says ridership grew that year. This change needs a change before it: the doubled buses in sentence two. The shorter wait then explains the rising ridership in sentence three. The sentence belongs after sentence two.
Where people slip
A sentence can sound fine in several positions. Only the pointing words and the logic of the paragraph settle it.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for ACT Preparation