How is PTE Reorder Paragraph scored?

The guide awards one point for each pair of neighbouring boxes that appear in the right order, with a minimum of 0. Pearson does not publish how many boxes an item has, so the five-box text in the table is our own example. With five boxes there are four neighbouring pairs to earn.

The pair rule explains why one misplaced box does not wipe out the whole answer: every correct link you keep still scores. It also explains why a single box in the wrong place in the middle can break two links at once.

This is our advice, not Pearson's rules. Find the opening box first. Pearson's tips say the topic sentence can stand on its own, without a pronoun such as "this" or "he" or a linker pointing back to something earlier.

Then build pairs from the clues that join sentences: a pronoun and the noun it replaces, "a" becoming "the", time order, and contrast words such as "however". Pairs you are sure of earn points even if the rest of the order is shaky.

If you cannot place one box, keep your confident chain together and put the doubtful box at one end, so it does not split the pairs you are sure of. That is a tactic, not a rule from Pearson.

BandLadder's PTE mock tests mark Reorder Paragraph with the same adjacent-pair rule, but only Pearson's score is official.