N3 Sentence Ordering (文の組み立て ★)
文の組み立て — the famous ★ question — gives you a scrambled sentence in four fragments and asks what belongs in the starred slot. On JLPT N3 it tests whether you can assemble grammar into natural order, not just recognise it.
How the question works
Four fragments have to be put in the right order to complete a sentence, and you answer by saying which fragment lands in the ★ (third) position. To get it right you actually have to build the whole sentence in your head — there's no shortcut around understanding the structure.
Because you only mark one slot, careless test-takers reorder loosely and guess; the points go to those who fully reconstruct the sentence.
Strategy & common traps
Start from the ends, not the middle. The fragment that fits right before the given tail, and the one that naturally opens the sentence, are usually the easiest to place — lock those in and the middle falls out. Then read your finished sentence back to check it sounds natural.
Look for grammar that forces an order: a particle that must attach to a specific word, a set pattern whose pieces can't be split, a clause that has to precede its verb. These dependencies do most of the ordering work for you.
About this N3 drill
The 250 questions are built from real N3 example sentences, broken into natural fragments. The English translation is given as a clue to the intended meaning, and each answer shows the full correct order so you can see how the pieces fit.
Practice now
Arrange the fragments. Which one goes in the ★ (third) slot?
＿＿ ＿＿ ★ ＿＿ ある
The sculptures are of great value.