OLSAT® Question Type:Sentence Arrangement

In this post, we start with an overview of "Sentence Arrangement" question types. We also provide a sample question, accompanied by tips and strategies that every student can use to perform successfully on "Sentence Arrangement" questions during the official OLSAT® exam.

Sentence Arrangement Questions: What To Expect?

These questions provide students with sentences that have been mixed up. Looking at this jumbled set of words, students must piece the words together to compose a complete thought.

These questions assess a student’s ability to understand the structure of language by asking them to take fragmented parts and, from them, create a whole.

The amount of sentence arrangement questions on the test depends on the age of the student and the test level. For example, fourth and fifth grade students taking the OLSAT® (for admission into fifth and sixth grade) are expected to answer approximately 4 of these types of questions.

Sentence Arrangement: Sample Question

Correct Answer: B

To answer this question, we must first make a complete sentence from the words provided. The sentence should read “Make sure you don’t forget.” Since the last word is forget, the correct answer is B.

Sentence Arrangement:Tips and Strategies

The best way to prepare for this question type is through extensive reading, but this may be difficult to accomplish if you don’t have much time to prepare. You can also teach your student about roots, prefixes, and suffixes and quiz her using flash cards. This can help her determine the meaning of words that are not familiar on the test.

If your student seems to be overwhelmed by the answer choices or falling for tricky incorrect options, tell her to cover the answer choices as she reads the sentence. While she reads, have her come up with a word to go in the blank(s) before looking at the answer choices. Once she has the word(s) in mind, she can look at the answer choices and find the option that is the closest to her original thought.

Advise your student to cross out obviously wrong answers.

If the sentence has two blanks, remind your student that an answer choice is not correct unless the words for both blanks are correctly supplied.

Ask her to explain her thought process so you can address misconceptions or flawed reasoning, in addition to reinforcing correct ideas.

What's Next?

Learn more about other verbal comprehension question types on the OLSAT, including Following Directions, Sentence Completion and Antonyms.

Also try some sample questions and see critical teaching tips that cover other areas of the OLSAT, including the sections on verbal reasoning, pictoral reasoning, figural reasoning, and quantitative reasoning.

If you think you need more information and guidance about the OLSAT, check out our in-depth article on the test, as well as our posts on the verbal and non-verbal section.

Also, learn everything you need to know about other tests that measure a child’s potential to learn in school, like the NNAT or the COGAT.