The multiple-choice grammar and writing questions on the SAT Writing and Language and ACT English sections present a wide range of mechanical and rhetorical challenges. Test takers have to be as comfortable connecting subjects with predicates and pronouns with antecedents as they do connecting independent and dependent clauses. Even students who master mechanics still need facility with advanced writing concerns like, among other things, organization, unity, and cohesion.
Both the SAT Expression of Ideas subscore and ACT Production of Writing Reporting Category establish organization as an imperative aspect of effective written English. Consequently, Organization questions on these tests require students to be able to place any piece of text where it belongs:
— a word or phrase in a sentence
— a sentence in a paragraph
— a paragraph in a passage
Most test takers find Organization questions both difficult and time-consuming. While the latter challenge can be overcome with exceptional grammar and writing knowledge along with high reading speed, the difficulty of Organization questions often results from a misunderstanding of why effective writing presents information in a specific and, often, unalterable order. Three important factors determine how words, sentences, and paragraphs need to be placed:
1. TIME CLUES
2. TRANSITIONS
3. CONTENT
While we’ve explained these essential components of organization in the past, an exercise would better demonstrate their applicability:
[1] And now, before the executioner can carry out the sentence, the accused is entitled to claim the right to speak freely—maybe for the last time—to say why the sentence should not be executed. [2] Rightly or wrongly, the British Government has sat in judgment upon the South African Republic. [3] It is on that ground that I have felt bound to afford the spokesman of our Dutch brethren in South Africa the opportunity to state their case in the hearing of the Empire. [4] Rightly or wrongly, it has condemned it to death.
This paragraph, excerpted from A Century of Wrong by F. W. Reitz, is presented out of logical order in the way that test takers might see on the SAT or ACT, though the tests usually displace only one sentence or paragraph. These sentences can be ordered properly by attending to both what is being said and the order in which the narrative develops. For example, pronouns are powerful indicators of order, as these words must follow the nouns they refer to or replace. Transitions and signal words also play a major role in defining order. On that basis, the only one of the four sentences unencumbered by the organizational obligations of pronouns or transitions is sentence 2, which must be the first of the paragraph:
[2] Rightly or wrongly, the British Government has sat in judgment upon the South African Republic.
Stylistic flourishes also serve to tie ideas in writing together, which makes sentence 4 the obvious extension of the rhetorical structure established in the first sentence:
[4] Rightly or wrongly, it has condemned it to death.
In this sentence, “it” refers in turn to both British Government and the South African Republic, which would not be at all apparent in a different order of sentences. Continuing the thought of a death sentence with a strong continuity transition of “and” to show how it must follow the introduction of the idea comes sentence 1:
[1] And now, before the executioner can carry out the sentence, the accused is entitled to claim the right to speak freely—maybe for the last time—to say why the sentence should not be executed.
Obviously, sentence 3 is the only one left and must serve as the conclusion. However, note the phrase “on that ground” as a reference to the right to speak freely described in sentence 1:
Rightly or wrongly, the British Government has sat in judgment upon the South African Republic. Rightly or wrongly, it has condemned it to death. And now, before the executioner can carry out the sentence, the accused is entitled to claim the right to speak freely—maybe for the last time—to say why the sentence should not be executed. It is on that ground that I have felt bound to afford the spokesman of our Dutch brethren in South Africa the opportunity to state their case in the hearing of the Empire.
Effective organization in tests and every other application of effective writing depends on far more than just what sounds right. The best writers express ideas with such clarity and precision that one must naturally follow another seamlessly. For success in Organization questions, use the evidence provided by content, transitions, and time clues to conclude the best and only logical order of words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs.
Mike Bergin