Numerical answer
The four sentences given below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Enter the correct order as a four-digit number.
1. Yet the reef's true value lies less in its beauty than in the coastline it quietly protects from storm surge.
2. Coral reefs are often described, in tourist brochures, as the rainforests of the sea, celebrated chiefly for their vivid colour and abundant marine life.
3. Removing a reef, whether through bleaching or blasting, therefore does not merely diminish a scenic underwater view but strips away a coastal community's first line of defence.
4. By absorbing up to ninety per cent of incoming wave energy before it reaches the shore, reefs reduce flooding and erosion during tropical storms far more cheaply than engineered seawalls.
1. Yet the reef's true value lies less in its beauty than in the coastline it quietly protects from storm surge.
2. Coral reefs are often described, in tourist brochures, as the rainforests of the sea, celebrated chiefly for their vivid colour and abundant marine life.
3. Removing a reef, whether through bleaching or blasting, therefore does not merely diminish a scenic underwater view but strips away a coastal community's first line of defence.
4. By absorbing up to ninety per cent of incoming wave energy before it reaches the shore, reefs reduce flooding and erosion during tropical storms far more cheaply than engineered seawalls.
Show answer and solution
Answer: 2143
Sentence 2 opens by introducing coral reefs via their popular, aesthetic reputation ('rainforests of the sea'). Sentence 1 pivots with 'Yet' to the passage's real point, coastal protection. Sentence 4 elaborates the mechanism of that protection (absorbing wave energy). Sentence 3 draws the concluding implication ('therefore') that removing a reef strips away this protection. The chain 2→1→4→3 moves from popular image, to the pivot, to the mechanism, to the conclusion, which is the only order producing a logical, connected paragraph.
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