Question

Fill in the blank with the most appropriate words
I didn’t recognise you. You look different.
I know I lost ______ lot of ________ weight.
a) a/no article
b) an/the
c) a/the
d) the/a
e) the/the

Answer 1

Hint: The given question deals with articles- a, an, the. “A” is used with words which begin with a consonant, “an” is used before words which begin with a vowel, and “the” is used with words which are proper nouns and which signify a particular object/item/person.

Complete answer:
In the given question, the word “lot” begins with the letter “l” which is a consonant. Thus, the article used will be “a”. In the second blank, there is no need to use an article before the word “weight” since it is not a countable object. We cannot count weight, we can only weigh it. Thus, no article will be placed before it. Thus, the correct option is option a.
Option b is wrong because “an” is used only before vowels. There is no need of a “the” before “weight”.
Option c is wrong because it suggests using “the” in the second blank which is wrong.
Option d is incorrect because using “the” in the first blank is wrong. A lot of weight is not something that qualifies as a proper noun. It is also not referring to something particular. Also the second blank does not need any article.
Option e is wrong because neither is “lot of weight” anything particular that it needs “the” to refer to it nor is there the need of any article before the “weight”.

Note:
Sometimes some words begin with a vowel but the article “a” is used before them. For example, a university. This is because of the pronunciation of the word “university”. It does not start with a vowel pronunciation. There are a few rare cases like these that need to be learnt up.