PSAT ORGANIZATION in WRITING

Requires two critical elements: LOGIC & FLOW LOGICAL ASPECT-moving from one idea to the next without creating confusion FLOW ASPECT-incorporating transitional strategies

ORGANIZATIONAL Good introductory sentences will introduce the main idea of the passage without giving away too many details Good concluding sentences summarize the main idea of the passage or restate the author’s main claim BOTH need to reflect the overall style and tone of the passage

TRANSITIONAL The error in these questions is usually in misidentifying the purpose of the transition-SEE CHART Determine which sentences are being connected by the transition; find what purpose best describes the relationship between the two sentences Higher layer of difficulty questions—involves more complex transitional sentences to link two paragraphs determine the main ideas of the two paragraphs-then distinguish the relationship based on main ideas no information should be included from paragraphs elsewhere

LOGICAL 1st type-where a particular sentence ought to be placed reread paragraph without that sentence use context clues to determine which sentence or sentences are most logically related to the sentence in question; the sentence should probably appear either immediately before, after, or between those sentences decide and then reread with sentence inserted 2nd type-place sentence within most logical part of paragraph (like a puzzle) examine closely-look for transitions that don’t make sense, sentences with related ideas but are not placed close together, or sentences that relate to other paragraphs but are not near those other paragraphs rearrange accordingly

Sample transition question