EN6 Organization, Transitions & Cohesion

Every ACT English section asks you to do something beyond fixing commas: it asks you to make a paragraph hold together. Those items — transitions, sentence placement, paragraph order, where a paragraph begins, what a paragraph opens or closes with — are grouped under Production of Writing, and they reward a completely different habit from the punctuation questions. Punctuation you can answer by looking at one clause. These you can only answer by reading what comes before and what comes after.

Transitions: name the relationship before you look at the choices

This is the single most reliable technique on the test, and almost nobody does it. When you hit a transition item, cover the four choices with your finger. Read the sentence before the blank and the sentence after it. Then say, in one word, what the second sentence does to the first:

The six relationships. Contrast — the second sentence pushes back (but, however, by contrast, on the other hand). Concession — the second sentence is true in spite of the first (nevertheless, even so, still). Cause/result — the second happens because of the first (therefore, as a result, consequently, because of that). Addition — a second point in the same direction (moreover, in addition, furthermore). Example — the second is an instance of the first (for example, for instance). Sequence — the second comes after in time or in a process (then, next, later, eventually).

Only after you have said the word out loud do you uncover the choices. Now you are matching, not browsing — and browsing is what produces wrong answers, because three of the four choices are perfectly good English words that simply describe a relationship these two sentences do not have.

The four traps that decide hard transition items

Cause is not sequence. Then only says the second thing happened afterwards. Therefore says the first thing made the second happen. If the passage gives you a mechanism — a so, a because, an explanation — you need cause, not sequence.
Addition is not comparison. In addition stacks a second point onto the first. Likewise and similarly claim the two things are parallel cases. If there are not two comparable cases in front of you, similarly is wrong no matter how smooth it sounds.
Contrast is not concession. However announces a difference. Nevertheless admits the first sentence is true and says the second happened anyway. "The bridge was condemned. Nevertheless, people kept walking across it" — the concession is the point.
By contrast needs two subjects. By contrast sets one thing against a different thing: pine against oak, Tuesday's crowd against Wednesday's. Two aspects of the same subject — it is cheap, but it is fragile — take however or but, not by contrast.

One word to watch: accordingly. It means "acting in accordance with" — it implies somebody made a decision in response to something. That agent does not have to be the grammatical subject: Accordingly, the case was reassigned is fine, because people did the reassigning. What accordingly cannot do is attribute a decision to something that makes none — a forest does not accordingly grow back and a cold front does not accordingly arrive. For those, use as a result or consequently. For those, use as a result or consequently.

Sentence placement

When a question asks where a sentence belongs, do not hunt for the spot where it "sounds nice." Look for the hooks — the words in the sentence that can only refer to something already said:

Pronouns and demonstratives: this method, they, such a delay, the second problem. Whatever the hook points at must appear before the sentence, not after it.
Chronology: a sentence describing a result cannot precede the sentence describing the cause.
Introductions: a sentence that names something for the first time ("A lichen is a partnership between a fungus and an alga") has to come before the sentences that call it "the partnership."

Then read the paragraph with the sentence in your chosen spot and confirm the sentences on both sides still connect. Most wrong placements fix one seam and break another.

Paragraph order and where a new paragraph begins

A paragraph is one idea. A new paragraph starts where the subject changes — from the problem to the solution, from one person to another, from the history to the present. The clue is almost always the sentence itself: it introduces a new noun, a new date, or a new claim, and it does not use a pronoun to point backwards.

The test for paragraph order: find the paragraph's first sentence and ask what it assumes you already know. A paragraph that opens "Her second experiment went differently" has to follow the paragraph describing the first experiment. A paragraph that opens by naming a person for the first time has to come before any paragraph that calls her "she."

Opening and closing sentences

These come with a goal attached — "introduces the paragraph's main idea," "concludes by returning to the essay's opening image," "sets up the comparison that follows." The goal is the whole question. A choice can be true, elegant and on-topic and still be wrong because it does not do the stated job. Read the goal, then check each choice against the goal alone. An opening sentence must be broad enough to cover everything in the paragraph; a closing sentence must connect to what the paragraph actually said, not introduce a new subject the essay never develops.

One last habit: after you pick, read your choice back into the passage, with the sentence before and the sentence after. Most Production of Writing errors are audible the moment you do.

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