CAT sentence placement practice: 10 questions with answers

The method

1. Read the sentence first. Ask what it needs before it, and what it leads to.
2. Map the gaps. Note what each gap sits between: a claim, an example, a turn, a conclusion.
3. Test two gaps. Read the sentences on both sides of your two best gaps.
4. Respect references. If the sentence says "this" or "in other words", what it refers to must come before it.

Para jumbles and sentence placement: the full guide →

Practice set: 10 questions

1. Question 1

   For most of the nineteenth century, European homes were dark inside. ___(1)___ Heavy curtains, small windows and dark wallpaper were the fashion. ___(2)___ Window glass was taxed in several countries, and lamps were expensive to run. ___(3)___ When the taxes fell and cheap electric light arrived, interiors grew lighter within a generation. ___(4)___

   Sentence to place: This was not simply a matter of taste.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
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2. Question 2

   Suppose a supermarket finds its checkout queues growing even after it adds more counters. ___(1)___ Managers notice that cashiers who rush make more errors, each of which takes minutes to fix. ___(2)___ The answer, surprisingly, is to slow down: staff are trained to work at a steady pace. ___(3)___ Customers also report feeling less hurried. ___(4)___

   Sentence to place: Within a month, average waiting times fall by almost a fifth.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
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3. Question 3

   The Greek myth of Prometheus tells of a Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. ___(1)___ For many readers he is a hero of progress, the patron of every inventor. ___(2)___ In the myth, after all, Zeus punished him terribly, and fire brought the means to destroy as well as to build. ___(3)___ The story has been retold in every age that worried about its own inventions. ___(4)___

   Sentence to place: Others, however, see in it a warning.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
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4. Question 4

   ___(1)___ Before the 1950s, cargo was loaded onto ships piece by piece, by teams of dockworkers. ___(2)___ A ship could spend as long in port as at sea. ___(3)___ Standard steel boxes, moved by crane from truck to ship to train, cut loading times from days to hours. ___(4)___ The cost of shipping fell so far that manufacturing could move across the world.

   Sentence to place: Few objects have changed the world as quietly as the shipping container.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
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5. Question 5

   Dictionaries are often treated as rulebooks that tell us how words should be used. ___(1)___ But the great dictionaries were built by collecting examples of how words had actually been used. ___(2)___ The Oxford English Dictionary gathered millions of quotations sent in by volunteer readers. ___(3)___ Each entry records not a fixed meaning but a word’s journey through time. ___(4)___

   Sentence to place: In that sense, every dictionary is a history book in disguise.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
   Show answer
6. Question 6

   Suppose a city wants to reduce littering in its parks. ___(1)___ Officials install many more bins and put up signs warning of heavy fines. ___(2)___ Within a year, litter in the parks has fallen sharply. ___(3)___ Surveys find that hardly anyone knows about the fines: people simply use the bins because one is always within reach. ___(4)___

   Sentence to place: The plan works, but not in the way its designers expected.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
   Show answer
7. Question 7

   ___(1)___ The historical record suggests something less romantic. ___(2)___ Darwin filled notebooks for more than twenty years before publishing On the Origin of Species. ___(3)___ Even famous eureka moments usually arrive after long periods of patient, unglamorous work. ___(4)___

   Sentence to place: We usually imagine that great discoveries come from sudden flashes of insight.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
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8. Question 8

   In some cultures, a pause before answering is a sign of respect. ___(1)___ It shows that the listener is taking the question seriously. ___(2)___ In others, the same pause can seem awkward or evasive. ___(3)___ Misunderstandings between colleagues from different backgrounds often begin with how each reads a silence. ___(4)___

   Sentence to place: Silence, in other words, is not the absence of communication but one of its forms.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
   Show answer
9. Question 9

   Writing was one of the greatest inventions in human history. ___(1)___ It allowed laws, stories and accounts to outlive the people who made them. ___(2)___ It made trade, government and science possible on a large scale. ___(3)___ In oral cultures, a trained memory had been a mark of learning; once texts could be consulted, memorising came to seem less important. ___(4)___

   Sentence to place: Yet the same tool also changed what counted as a good memory.

   APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
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10. Question 10

    ___(1)___ In the late 1960s, a chemist at a large company was trying to create a very strong adhesive. ___(2)___ He produced the opposite: a glue so weak it could be peeled off and reused. ___(3)___ For years nobody found a use for it, until a colleague used it to keep bookmarks from falling out of his hymn book. ___(4)___ The result was the sticky note.

    Sentence to place: Not every useful idea arrives looking useful.

    APosition 1BPosition 2CPosition 3DPosition 4
    Show answer

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