A modifier question tests whether you can tell who or what a phrase at the start of a sentence describes. Read that phrase and ask who could do everything it names, especially when it gives more than one action. Then name who or what it describes and find the main noun right after its comma. That noun must be the person or thing you named, because the opening phrase describes it. A familiar name elsewhere in the sentence doesn't fix the wrong noun in that spot.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look at the two actions before the blank. What do they tell you about who or what the opening phrase describes?
- Hint 2
For each choice, find the main noun right after the opening comma. Does that noun name whoever reviewed the records and interviewed the foragers?
Step-by-step
Match the opening phrase to its noun
Step 1Find who the opening describes
The words after reviewing emergency-room records and interviewing experienced foragers describe someone who studied records and spoke to foragers. Where must that person appear for this opening phrase to work? A describing phrase at the start of a sentence describes the main noun right after its comma, so the blank must put whoever did both in that spot. The passage hasn't named that person yet, so the main noun in each choice will decide.
- Step 2
Read past the doctor's name
Does a doctor's name anywhere in a choice make that doctor its main noun? The versions beginning a report by and the report both put a report, not its writer, after the comma. In a report by, the words after by name the writer; in the report, the words about who prepared it tell us which report. Either way, the document would do the reviewing and interviewing, which a report can't do.
- Step 3
Put the person first and finish the sentence
The version starting the ember cap makes a mushroom review records and interview foragers; the doctor's name inside the commas doesn't change its main noun. Who does toxicologist Dr. Elena Ruiz give us instead? It puts the person who could do both right after the opening comma. Read through may cause intense stomach cramps: reports that connects the doctor's finding to what the mushroom may cause. Choice A.