Numerical answer
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) given below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper order and key in the sequence of four numbers as your answer.
1. Yet when researchers tracked employees moving into open-plan spaces, face-to-face interaction fell sharply while email and messaging rose.
2. Open-plan offices were promoted as a way to break down walls, literally and figuratively, between colleagues.
3. Deprived of privacy, workers seem to have retreated behind headphones and screens, building virtual walls where physical ones had been removed.
4. The assumption was that people who could see each other would talk to each other more, and that ideas would flow more freely.
1. Yet when researchers tracked employees moving into open-plan spaces, face-to-face interaction fell sharply while email and messaging rose.
2. Open-plan offices were promoted as a way to break down walls, literally and figuratively, between colleagues.
3. Deprived of privacy, workers seem to have retreated behind headphones and screens, building virtual walls where physical ones had been removed.
4. The assumption was that people who could see each other would talk to each other more, and that ideas would flow more freely.
Show answer and solution
Answer: 2413
2 introduces the subject (open-plan offices and their promise) and opens the paragraph.
4: 'The assumption' spells out the reasoning behind the promise in 2.
1: 'Yet' marks the contrast between that assumption and what the research found (less face-to-face interaction).
3 explains the finding in 1 (workers retreated behind 'virtual walls') and echoes the 'walls' image from 2, closing the paragraph.
Order: 2-4-1-3.
Trap: 2-1-… skips the assumption. 'Yet' in 1 needs a stated expectation to contradict, and that expectation is in 4.
4: 'The assumption' spells out the reasoning behind the promise in 2.
1: 'Yet' marks the contrast between that assumption and what the research found (less face-to-face interaction).
3 explains the finding in 1 (workers retreated behind 'virtual walls') and echoes the 'walls' image from 2, closing the paragraph.
Order: 2-4-1-3.
Trap: 2-1-… skips the assumption. 'Yet' in 1 needs a stated expectation to contradict, and that expectation is in 4.
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