Flow Chart Completion Rules for HSC

A flow chart question gives you a passage and boxes to fill from it. Read the passage first, find the stage each box refers to from the boxes already filled, and write the answer in a short phrase of three to eight words — not a sentence. Every answer must come from the passage; nothing may be invented.

The format

Read the passage before you look at the chart

This is the whole technique in one instruction. The chart is a summary of the passage, so the passage contains every answer; reading the chart first makes you start hunting for words to fill boxes rather than understanding what the passage says.

Read the passage once through. Only then look at the chart, and use the boxes that are already filled to work out which part of the passage each empty box refers to.

Use the filled boxes as your key

The examiner fills one or two boxes as examples, and they tell you three things: where in the passage the chart starts, how much detail each box holds, and what grammatical shape the answers should take. Matching that shape is worth real marks.

• If the given box reads reached the village, write met the headman, not he met the headman.
• If it reads Boiling the water, write Adding the tea leaves — keep the -ing form.
• If it is a noun phrase, answer with a noun phrase.
• Count the words in the given box; yours should be about the same length.

Write a phrase, not a sentence

A flow chart box holds a phrase of roughly three to eight words. Writing a full sentence is the most common error in this item, and it costs marks even when the content is right, because it shows the candidate has not understood what a flow chart is.

• ✓ drying the leaves in the sun
• ✗ After that, the leaves are dried in the sun by the workers.
• No full stop at the end of a box.
• No connectors — then, after that — inside the box; the arrows already show sequence.

Take the words from the passage

Unlike a summary, a flow chart is not testing paraphrase. Lifting the key words from the passage is correct and expected — what you must not do is lift a whole sentence, or invent a stage the passage does not mention.

• 🚨 Every answer must be traceable to the passage. Nothing from general knowledge.
• Compress by deleting, not by rewording.
• If two stages appear in one sentence of the passage, they belong in two boxes.

Model answer

Worked example

Passage

Making paper by hand begins with sorting the raw material — old cotton rags and waste paper are separated by colour and quality. The sorted material is then soaked in water for several days until it softens. Once soft, it is beaten into a pulp, traditionally by hand but now usually in a machine. The pulp is poured into a shallow vat and a fine mesh screen is dipped into it and lifted out flat, so that an even layer of fibre settles on the mesh. The wet sheet is pressed to remove most of the water and finally hung in the shade to dry.

The chart, with box 1 given

Box 1 (given): sorting the raw material → Box 2: ? → Box 3: ? → Box 4: ? → Box 5: ? → Box 6: ?

Answers

Box 2 — soaking it in water for days. Box 3 — beating it into a pulp. Box 4 — lifting a layer on a mesh screen. Box 5 — pressing out the water. Box 6 — drying the sheet in the shade.

Why they are shaped that way

Box 1 is an -ing phrase of four words, so every answer is an -ing phrase of similar length. Each takes its key words straight from the passage — soaked, beaten into a pulp, pressed, dry — with the grammar adjusted to match. No box contains a connector or a full stop, and nothing has been invented.

What earns and loses marks

• 🚨 Read the passage first, always. The chart makes sense only once you know what the passage says.
• Count the words in the given box and match its length and grammar.
• Write phrases of three to eight words; never a full sentence.
• Take the key words from the passage — this is not a paraphrase exercise.
• If you cannot find a box’s answer in the passage, you have matched the boxes to the wrong part of it. Go back rather than inventing.

Mistakes to avoid

• ✗ After that, the material is soaked in water for several days until it becomes soft. ✓ soaking it in water for days — a box takes a phrase, not a sentence
• ✗ using modern machinery for efficiency ✓ beating it into a pulp — the first is invented; the passage does not say it