The first female biologist at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, Rachel L.

I said A.
B: 'by showing' is redundant.. 'showed' is a better use here.
C: 'and' wrongly connects Rachel (herself) from showing the pesticides as dangerous; it is the book that does this act.
D: You need a past participle here to portray that the landmark legislation 'made' the environment a safer place.
E: Very wordy. You also need a good 'if-then' here. The 'dangers of pesticides' weren't the main cause of worry for the legislation. It was the American public that enacted this.

Resulting is the correct form leaving A & E. In E, the especially of DDT incorrectly modifies dangers of pesticides.

Hi, could you guys please explain whether it's important to have "especially of DDT" instead of "especially DDT" as in the stimulus?

Should it not be resulted as it is a different action? Not sure of the correct answer. I think its E.

My POE:


This answer choice seems ok. That showed the American... it modifies the Silent Spring. Resulting modifies previous clause. Makes perfect sense.

I will keep it for the moment.


If i cut he modifier "that by bla bla bla", i will have the following sentence "Rachel L. Carson wrote her masterpiece Silent Spring resulted in a landmark legislation....?!?!?" That does not make sense.

Hence, (B) is out.


Rachel L. Carson wrote her masterpiece Silent Spring and showed the dangers of pesticides? no. The masterpiece showed the danger, resulting in a landmark legislation.

(C) is out.

quote="Kinshook"]
D. showing the American public the dangers of pesticides, especially of DDT, resulted
[/quote]

Same principle as in (C) and (B).

(D) is out.

quote="Kinshook"]
E. that showed the dangers of pesticides, especially of DDT, to the American public and resulted[/quote]

I will be ok with this one but the parallelism should be that bla bla bla and that bla bla bla.

Hence (E) is out.

IMO (A) is the answer

In option B, the clause 'by showing the pesticides.... resulted...' is not correct. We know that a prepositional phrase 'by showing the pesticides' can not be the subject of the sentence. That's why, B is incorrect.

The underlined portion modifies “Silent Spring”. We might mistakenly look for parallelism in this sentence but the two words in the sentence that could be parallel to each other are ‘showed’ and ‘resulting’, and the two words aren’t in the same form in any of the options except E .

So, let’s explore the meaning of this modifier. The underlined portion is a modifier that tells us about the masterpiece written by Rachel. L. Carson. The modifier provides us with the information that the masterpiece showed the American public the dangers of pesticides, especially one pesticide, i.e., DDT. The underlined portion also includes part of another modifier, which tells us that the fact that this masterpiece showed the public the dangers of pesticides resulted in a landmark legislation.

The use of the conjunction ‘and’ at the beginning of Option C serves to change the nature of the sentence. It converts the modifier into another clause and conveys the meaning that Carson wrote the book and Carson showed the dangers of pesticides to the public and that Carson resulted in a landmark legislation.

Option D does more or less the same thing as Option C because of the participle ‘resulted’ at the end of the option.

Options A, B, and C all start with the relative pronoun ‘that’, but Option B is unnecessarily wordy. With the use of phrases such as “by showing the pesticides dangers, and “especially of DDT”, Option B becomes bulky and verbose. The phrase “pesticides dangers” is also not grammatically and stylistically correct.

Between Options A and E, E is again wordy. It uses the same phrase as in Option B – “especially of DDT”. It also changes the meaning of the sentence subtly, conveying the meaning that the masterpiece showed the dangers and resulted in the landmark legislation. The meaning intended is that the fact that the book showed the dangers to the American public resulted in the landmark legislation. The use of the absolute modifier at the end of Option A achieves that effect better.

Therefore, Option A is the best.


Jayanthi Kumar.

Can "especially of DDT" be a clue to rule out?
A. that showed the American public the dangers of pesticides, especially DDT, resulting
B. that by showing the pesticides dangers to the American public, especially of DDT, resulted
C. and showed the dangers of pesticides, especially of DDT, to the American public, resulting
D. showing the American public the dangers of pesticides, especially of DDT, resulted
E. that showed the dangers of pesticides, especially of DDT, to the American public and resulted

I do not think think that is the key to the question.

B, D, E all have much bigger and more pressing issues than "of DTT".

B suffers from a meaning error. The "resulted" at the end appears to modify "the American Public" which leads to a non-sense meaning. Resulted is meant to modify the whole idea of "showing the American public the dangers".

D suffers from a similar error as B. The resulted at the end appears to modify "the dangers of pesticides" which leads to a non-sense meaning.


E suffers from parallelism issue - The first female biologist wrote (that....) and (resulted). This has a complete non-sense meaning, that the first female biologist resulted in legislation. For the sentence to make sense, it would have to be the first female biologist wrote Silent spring that showed.. and that resulted..

Between A and C, C is just a much worse construction. There is no reason to separate the "showing the danger to the public" since that was done by the book. The two actions are linked in the sentence.

A is the best option.