Sentences of a paragraph are given below. While the first and the last…
2025
Sentences of a paragraph are given below. While the first and the last sentences (1 and 6) are in the correct order, the sentences in between are jumbled up. Arrange the sentences in the correct order to form a meaningful and coherent paragraph.
1. On the first landing there was only one door, and it was locked.
A) There came forth to meet me the chill musty air.
B) The same air that is characteristic of a long unoccupied room.
C) But when I turned the handle, it opened.
D) On the second landing there was also only one door.
6. With it there came an indescribable odour.
Answer: B. DCAB — Para-jumble (sentence rearrangement) questions are solved by tracking cohesion devices across sentences — pronouns, definite articles such as ‘the same’, echo…
- A.
ABCD
- B.
DCAB
- C.
BCDA
- D.
DABC
Attempted by 3 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Para-jumble (sentence rearrangement) questions are solved by tracking cohesion devices across sentences — pronouns, definite articles such as ‘the same’, echo words such as ‘also’, and cause-effect signals — each of which resolves against a specific noun or event named in an earlier sentence. Among the unplaced sentences, the one placed next is always the one whose opening device already resolves against the fixed anchor sentence or the sentence most recently placed; a sentence whose device has no resolvable antecedent yet cannot be placed there and must wait until that antecedent appears.
Sentence 1 ends with the first-landing door being locked, so the next sentence should continue the house description rather than resolve sentence 6's ‘it’ too early.
Sentence D (‘On the second landing there was also only one door’) uses ‘also’ to echo the door already named in sentence 1, so it must sit directly after sentence 1; it introduces a fresh, second door for the narrator to interact with after the first one was found locked.
Sentence C (‘But when I turned the handle, it opened’) uses ‘it’ to refer back to the door just introduced in D, and ‘But’ contrasts this door opening with the locked door of sentence 1.
Sentence A (‘There came forth to meet me the chill musty air’) follows naturally from C, since air ‘coming forth’ is the direct result of the door being opened.
Sentence B (‘The same air that is characteristic of a long unoccupied room’) extends A with the definite phrase ‘the same air’, which needs ‘air’ to already be mentioned — and it was, in A.
Sentence 6 (‘With it there came an indescribable odour’) uses ‘it’ to refer to the air just described in B, completing the paragraph.
Cross-check: sentence D is anchored to sentence 1 by ‘also’, while sentence C is anchored to D because D supplies the second door whose handle the narrator turns. Independently, A leads to B through the definite phrase ‘the same air’, and B leads to sentence 6 through ‘With it’. These cohesion links join as D, C, A, B between the fixed opening and closing sentences, confirming the sequence without relying on any single pronoun alone.
So the interior sentences run D, C, A, B, matching option ‘DCAB’.