Sentence scramble: rebuild the sentence
The words are shuffled and you put them in order. The word-order game.
Word order is one of the first things that gives a foreigner away and one of the last to become automatic. In German it decides where the verb goes; in Russian, what is being emphasised. Rebuilding a whole sentence forces you to decide that piece by piece.
How to play
- A sentence appears with its words shuffled.
- You tap them in the order you think is right.
- You check and see the properly built sentence.
What it trains
Syntax, which almost no vocabulary game touches. There is no word to remember — they are all in front of you. The question is where each one goes.
It is especially useful in German, where verb position changes with the clause type, and in Russian, where order is flexible but not arbitrary. All the games
FAQ
- Is there only one correct answer?
- It checks against the original example sentence. In languages with flexible order there may be valid alternatives; the reference is always the natural construction from the example.
- Is it useful if my problem is vocabulary?
- Less than others: here the words are given. For vocabulary, [flashcards](/en/games/flashcards) or [typing](/en/games/typing) work better.