Question

Fill in the blank with an appropriate article.
I was so ill, so I went to see _______ doctor who has a clinic beside my home.
A) a
B) an
C) the
D) No article

Answer 1

Hint: Articles are words which describe a particular or unspecified noun.
“She had an apple”, for instance. Here, we specified the noun "apple" by using the article "an."

Complete answer:
There are two types of articles in the English language generally: definite and indefinite.
The definite article is the word "The". The sense of a noun is limited to a particular thing. Your buddy, for instance, may ask, "Did you go this weekend for the party? The specific article says that your friend refers to a certain party you all know about. For singular, plural or uncountable nouns the definite article can be used.

An indefinite article states a general noun rather than a particular or specific noun. There are two forms of the indefinite article: “a” and “an”. The article "a" is used when the word precedes with a consonant sound/alphabets and on the other hand the article “an” is used when the words start with a vowel sound/alphabets. For instance, “Can I give you a gift?”. Here, the indefinite article indicates that she/he is not referring to a particular gift. Always remember that indefinite articles only appear with singular nouns.

Let us now look at the sentence given in the question:
“I was so ill, so I went to see _______ doctor who has a clinic beside my home.”
Here, “doctor” is a specified/particular noun that “has a clinic beside the house”.

Now, let’s analyse the given options:
Option (A) a - Although the “doctor” word has a consonant sound this is incorrect because “doctor that has a clinic beside the house” is a specified noun.
Option (B) an - This is incorrect because the word “doctor” does not start with a vowel sound and “doctor” is a particular noun.
Option (C) The - This is correct because a definite article is used for only specific nouns and here here, “doctor” is a specified/particular noun that “has a clinic beside the house”.
Option (D) No article - This is incorrect because an article is needed for a noun.

Therefore, the correct option is (C) i.e, ‘the’.
“I was so ill, so I went to see the doctor who has a clinic beside my home.”

Note: The basic rule of using “a” article is before consonant sounds/alphabets and “an” article before vowel sound/alphabets, but there are few exceptions to this. For instance, the word is “honour”. It starts with a consonant alphabet “h” but a vowel sound “o”. Therefore, we put “an” before honour.