Shuffled Sentences

In this lesson, you will learn how to solve shuffled sentence questions. In these questions, the words of a sentence have been mixed up, and you must work out the correct order to form a sentence that makes sense. This is a question type that appears regularly in CEM 11+ exams.

---

What Is a Shuffled Sentence Question?

You are given a set of words in the wrong order. Your task is to rearrange them into a grammatically correct, meaningful sentence. You may then be asked to identify a specific word — for example, the first word, the last word, or the middle word of the correctly ordered sentence.

Example:

garden the in played children the

Rearranged: The children played in the garden.

If asked "What is the last word?" the answer would be garden.

---

Why CEM Includes Shuffled Sentences

Shuffled sentences test several skills at once:

• Grammar — you must understand how English sentences are structured.
• Comprehension — you must create a sentence that makes sense.
• Speed — CEM exams are tightly timed, so you need quick strategies.

In the CEM exam, the format may vary from year to year. Sometimes you rearrange the full sentence; other times you pick the word that goes in a specific position.

---

Step-by-Step Method

Step 1: Find the Capital Letter

Look for a word with a capital letter — this is usually the first word of the sentence (unless it is a proper noun like a name or place).

Step 2: Find the Full Stop or Punctuation

If there is a word followed by a full stop, question mark, or exclamation mark, this is the last word.

Step 3: Look for the Subject and Verb

Every sentence needs a subject (who or what) and a verb (the action). Find these and pair them together.

Step 4: Build Around the Core

Add the remaining words around the subject-verb pair, checking that the sentence flows naturally.

Step 5: Read It Back

Does the sentence make grammatical sense? Does it sound natural?

---

Worked Example 1: Basic Shuffled Sentence

Shuffled words: quickly very the fox ran

Step-by-step:

1. Capital letter: "The" (but written as "the" — assume it starts the sentence).
2. Subject: fox. Verb: ran.
3. Core: "The fox ran"
4. Add remaining: "very quickly"
5. Full sentence: The fox ran very quickly.

If asked "What is the third word?" the answer is ran.

---

Worked Example 2: Longer Sentence

Shuffled words: after the heavy rain flooded roads the were

Step-by-step:

1. Capital letter: look for sentence start — "The" or "After"
2. Try "After the heavy rain" — this sounds like a good beginning.
3. Subject: roads. Verb: were flooded.
4. Full sentence: After the heavy rain the roads were flooded.
5. Alternatively: The roads were flooded after the heavy rain.