A verb form question tests whether you need a main verb or a form that only describes. Find the subject, who or what the sentence is about, and read to the period past extra information. Then count main verbs for the blank's own subject, not verbs tucked into descriptions. Main verbs tell what a subject does or is; an -ing form needs a helper to do that. A complete sentence needs a main verb, but several for one subject need a joining word.
Hints
- Hint 1
Find the subject before the first dash. Which noun names what the whole sentence is about?
- Hint 2
Read past the blank to the period. Which later words tell what that subject has done?
- Hint 3
Check how the blank connects to the rest of the sentence. Does it have its own subject or a joining word that would let it add another main verb?
Step-by-step
Find the subject and count its main verbs
Step 1Set aside the extra information
The subject, what the sentence is about, is a cache of wooden writing tablets, so let's check whether it still needs a main verb. What can we set aside? The words between the dashes give extra information about the tablets, including on which faint letters are visible. The verb are belongs to the letters there, not to the cache.
- Step 2
Read past the blank for the main verb
Past the blank, that list imported dyes separately from locally produced pigments tells us about the inventories, so list isn't the cache's main verb. Which later words say what the cache has done? We reach has enabled historians: the cache has enabled historians to map commercial ties. So the cache already has its main verb, even though it appears far after the subject.
- Step 3
Check whether another main verb can join
Can the blank add another main verb for the cache? At ______ inventories, no new subject appears, and no joining word links the blank to has enabled. The forms records, record, and has recorded are all main-verb forms, so they'd add a second verb with no link to the first. That means this spot needs a form that only describes.
- Step 4
Choose the describing form
The wooden writing tablets contain written inventories. Which form describes the tablets as recording those inventories? An -ing form can describe what a noun does, so the form recording describes what is written on the tablets without starting a new sentence. Choice B.