Also in 2024 Test B English, question 12; 2026 Practice Test D English, question 43.
Passage Moving through Mountains
Moving through Mountains
(1) An age-old proverb says that necessity is the mother of invention. (2) Centuries of human ingenuity in the face of obstacles prove this to be true. (3) For many years the Swiss Alps, a mountain range spanning southern Switzerland and northern Italy, were such an obstacle. (4) Roads and railways had to navigate around the mountains or through winding tunnels inside the mountains, making the transportation of people and goods difficult and time consuming. (5) In 2016 these burdens were eased with the completion of the Gotthard Base Tunnel.
(6) Construction of the high-speed railway tunnel began in 1996. (7) The tunnel was created through the use of tunnel-boring machines, which are giant drills with a flat rotating head called a cutter head. (8) Each of the tunnel-boring machines used during the construction of the tunnel was about the length of four football fields arranged end-to-end. (9) During the seventeen-year construction period, 28 million tons of rock were removed, enough to rebuild the Great Pyramid of Giza five times. (10) This massive construction project is reported to have cost $12 billion. (11) After that, 4 million cubic meters of concrete, or enough concrete to build eighty-four Empire State Buildings, were used to construct and support the tunnel.
(12) By 2020 the high-speed railway will carry more than 250 freight trains and 55 passenger trains a day, with most traveling at speeds of around 100 to 125 miles per hour. (13) It will be faster for people to travel between northern and southern Europe. (14) The travel time between the European cities of Zurich, Switzerland, and Milan, Italy, will be reduced by an hour. (15) Many European leaders compare the Gotthard Base Tunnel to the Channel Tunnel, a 33-mile underwater tunnel that connects the United Kingdom and France. (16) While there is no roadway in the Channel Tunnel, people can drive their cars onto special trains that will carry vehicles through to the other side.
(17) Just as traffic congestion in major cities led to the construction of underground local transportation, natural formations, such as mountain ranges, have also sent people underground for faster, easier, and cheaper methods of transportation across larger areas. (18) There is renewed interest in constructing innovative methods of transportation that will help eliminate problems associated with traveling to and from certain areas.
Question
Where should sentence 11 be moved in order to improve the organization of the second paragraph (sentences 6–11)?
- Ato the beginning of the paragraph (before sentence 6)
- Bbetween sentences 6 and 7
- Cbetween sentences 8 and 9
- Dbetween sentences 9 and 10
Show the answer
Correct answer: D
The Answer is (D)
The question asks where sentence 11, which completes the detailed steps of how the tunnel was built, should be moved within the second paragraph in order to improve the organization of the paragraph.
Option D, placing the sentence between sentences 9 and 10, is correct because placing the sentence there helps the reader understand the full sequence of steps performed in constructing the tunnel before the cost of the project is introduced.
Option A, placing the sentence at the beginning of the paragraph (before sentence 6), is incorrect because it would not make sense since the process of building the tunnel has not yet been introduced.
Similarly, Option B is incorrect because placing the sentence after sentence 6 would not make sense given that adding concrete would have to happen after the rock was broken down and removed from the tunnel.
Option C, placing the sentence between sentences 8 and 9, would also be incorrect because the use of concrete did not take place before the removal of “28 million tons of rock” (sentence 9).
Question analysis
This revising question asks where to move a sentence about the concrete used to support the Gotthard Base Tunnel so the second paragraph is better organized. Students must follow the order of the construction steps and notice what the sentence's opening words refer back to, since several positions sound acceptable at a glance.
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 Ordering sentences logically is a grade 7 writing skill. Here the student follows a sequence of construction steps and a time-order signal word, a short, typical grade 7 revision task with four nearby positions to compare.
- Estimated difficulty
- Moderate: several steps, or a close reading with one strong distractor.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- How sentences fit together major
- A very close wrong answer moderate
- Much to keep track of minor
- Every choice must be checked minor
- Evidence
- Answered from one paragraph or stanza
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 11, 362 words; question and choices: about grade 7, 33 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
The question turns on two signal phrases: what “After that” must follow, and what “This massive construction project” sums up. Students who see only that the concrete belongs with the digging often park it beside the machine details, before the rock has been cleared. Those who try each position in context see that lining the tunnel can only follow removing the rock.
How sentences fit together major Working it out
Sentence 11 opens with “After that”, so it must follow the rock removal in sentence 9, while “This massive construction project” in sentence 10 reads best as the paragraph's close. (Halliday & Hasan, 1976)
A very close wrong answer moderate Choosing the answer
Moving the sentence between sentences 8 and 9 differs from the right spot, between 9 and 10, by a single sentence, and only seeing that sentence 9's rock removal must come first tells them apart. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987; Gorin & Embretson, 2006; Ascalon et al., 2007)
Much to keep track of minor Working it out
The construction steps, from the 1996 start through the machines, the 28 million tons of rock and the concrete, have to be kept in order across six sentences. (Sweller, 1988; Carpenter, Just & Shell, 1990)
Every choice must be checked minor Choosing the answer
Each of the four positions has to be tried by rereading the paragraph with the concrete sentence in place, since several sound acceptable at a glance. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987)
Strategy: Look at the signal words that open sentence 11 and ask what event they must follow. Then read the paragraph with the sentence in each position to check the order of events.
Traps
- Sentence in the wrong place: Puts a sentence where it breaks the order of ideas or separates it from what it refers to.
The wrong answers, classified
A Sentence in the wrong place (Halliday & Hasan, 1976)
Moves the sentence to open the paragraph, where “After that” would follow the 2016 completion in sentence 5, putting the concrete work after the tunnel was finished.
B Sentence in the wrong place (Halliday & Hasan, 1976)
Reads “After that” as following the 1996 start of construction, which sounds smooth but has the tunnel lined with concrete before any machine had bored it.
C Sentence in the wrong place (Halliday & Hasan, 1976)
Sees that the concrete comes after the machines did their work but places it before sentence 9, so the tunnel is lined before its 28 million tons of rock are removed.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
Sentence 11 is in the wrong spot. You need to move it so paragraph 2 tells events in the right order. Paragraph 2 is sentences 6 to 11.
Look at the clue words in sentence 11
Sentence 11 says: “After that, 4 million cubic meters of concrete, or enough concrete to build eighty-four Empire State Buildings, were used to construct and support the tunnel.” “After that” is a transition, a word or phrase that links ideas. It tells you the concrete came after some other event. You need to find that event.
Put the building steps in order
Think about how you build a tunnel. First you dig out the rock. Then you line the hole with concrete to hold it up.
- Sentence 6: work began in 1996.
- Sentences 7 and 8: the machines that did the digging.
- Sentence 9: “28 million tons of rock were removed.”
- Sentence 10: the project cost $12 billion.
The concrete must come after the rock is removed. So sentence 11 belongs right after sentence 9.
Read the paragraph in the new order
Sentence 9 removes the rock. “After that,” the concrete is poured. Then sentence 10 sums up “This massive construction project” and its cost. The cost makes a good last point. Right now, sentence 11 comes after the cost. So “After that” seems to mean after paying. That makes no sense.
Check each choice
- A, before sentence 6: “After that” would point back to sentence 5, after the tunnel was finished.
- B, after sentence 6: the concrete would come before any digging.
- C, between 8 and 9: the tunnel would be lined before the rock was removed.
- D, between 9 and 10: the concrete comes right after the rock is removed.
Watch out: C is only one spot away from D. Ask yourself: is the rock gone yet? In C, it isn’t.
Pick the answer
So the answer is D, between sentences 9 and 10.
Now the paragraph goes: start, machines, digging, concrete, cost.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
Choice C is close because it puts the concrete after the machines. But sentence 9 is where the rock is removed, and you can’t line a tunnel that is still full of rock. Only D puts “After that” right after the rock removal.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Moving through Mountains” as printed (page 48)
