A modifier question tests whether an opening describing phrase points to the right person or thing. Read that phrase and name who or what it describes from what it says they did. The main noun right after the comma must be the person or thing you named. Then find each choice’s main noun and check that it can also do what follows the blank. Mentioning someone elsewhere doesn’t make them the noun the opening phrase describes.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look at the phrase before the blank. Who spent decades researching the butterflies?
- Hint 2
Check the main noun right after the comma. Could that noun be the one who did the research and published the landmark study?
Step-by-step
Match the opening phrase to its subject
Step 1Find who the opening phrase describes
After spending decades researching the migratory patterns of monarch butterflies describes someone but leaves that person unnamed. Such a describing phrase is called a modifier. Who has to follow its comma for this sentence to be grammatical? The main noun right after the comma must be the researcher, because the opening phrase describes that noun.
- Step 2
Separate the researcher from her work
In the findings of and the publications of, which words are the main nouns? They’re findings and publications, while the words after of name whose work it is. Those main nouns are the subjects, the people or things the sentence is about. Neither findings nor publications can be spending decades researching, so naming Ramirez after of doesn’t put the researcher in the subject’s place.
- Step 3
Check the version with a by phrase
Does her findings were compiled by put the researcher in the subject’s place? No, its subject is still findings, while Ramirez is named later as the person who compiled them. This is passive wording: the subject receives the action instead of doing it. The phrase After spending decades researching would describe the findings, so Ramirez’s name after by comes too late.
- Step 4
Read the researcher’s sentence through
Read the version beginning biologist Dr. Elena Ramirez with the words after the blank. Ramirez is the subject: she compiled her findings and published a landmark study, so both verbs say what she did. She also fits the opening research phrase, which means the researcher is the subject throughout the sentence. Choice C.