Question 250·Easy·Form, Structure, and Sense
At the city hospital, Dr. Gupta is a surgeon ____ research focuses on improving recovery times for patients after knee surgery.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
For pronoun and relative pronoun questions, first identify what role the missing word plays: subject (doing the action), object (receiving the action), possessive (showing ownership), or contraction (like "who's" = "who is"). Look immediately after the blank to see how the rest of the clause is structured, then test each choice by briefly plugging it in. Eliminate any option whose basic meaning (like a contraction) or grammatical role (subject vs. object vs. possessive) does not match what the sentence needs, and select the one that keeps the sentence both grammatical and logical.
Hints
Look closely at the words after the blank
Focus on the phrase immediately after the blank: it starts with "research focuses." What is "research" doing in that phrase?
Decide what kind of word is needed
Ask yourself: Do we need a word that acts like a subject (doing an action), an object (receiving an action), a contraction, or something that shows ownership/relationship to "research"?
Test the meanings of the options
Try mentally replacing the blank with "who is" or "who has" (for the contraction) and see if the sentence still makes sense. Then think about which option correctly connects Dr. Gupta to "research."
Step-by-step Explanation
Understand what the blank is doing
Read the sentence around the blank:
"Dr. Gupta is a surgeon ___ research focuses on improving recovery times..."
The blank introduces extra information about Dr. Gupta and connects her to "research focuses" — this is a relative clause describing Dr. Gupta.
Notice the relationship between Dr. Gupta and "research"
The words right after the blank are "research focuses".
- The subject of the verb "focuses" is "research."
- We need a word in the blank that shows that the research belongs to Dr. Gupta (a possessive relationship), not a new subject for the verb.
Test and eliminate the incorrect choices
Check how each incorrect option works in the sentence:
- B) "who's" means "who is" or "who has." Plugging it in gives "a surgeon who is research focuses" or "who has research focuses"—both are ungrammatical.
- C) "who" is used as a subject pronoun (like "who is..."), but here the subject is already "research," so "a surgeon who research focuses" is incorrect.
- D) "whom" is an object pronoun (used after prepositions or verbs), but in this spot it would be followed directly by a noun ("research"), which does not make sense.
All three of these choices fail either grammatically or in meaning, so they must be wrong.
Choose the possessive relative pronoun that fits
The sentence needs a possessive relative pronoun to show that the research belongs to Dr. Gupta. The only option that is possessive and correctly links Dr. Gupta to "research" is A) whose, so that the sentence reads:
"At the city hospital, Dr. Gupta is a surgeon whose research focuses on improving recovery times for patients after knee surgery."