Question

Fill in the blank with the most appropriate words.
It’s _____ low season now, and _______most of ______ hotels are half empty.
(A) the/no article/the
(B) a/no article/the
(C) no article/no article/the
(D) a/no article/no article

Answer 1

Hint: The articles (a, an, the) are generally used before a noun. They indicate that the noun is known to the user. Read the words specifically before which blanks are present and find out if they require an article or not. Not every blank necessarily needs to be filled with an article.

Complete answer:
Articles (a, an, the) may be definite or indefinite
Definite article: A definite article is used whenever something specific is referred. This is the only definite article. It is used to point out something unique, that is, name of a person, place, animal or thing (noun)
Indefinite articles: An indefinite article is used whenever there is general talk about somebody or something. A and An are indefinite articles. An is used before a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) and A is used before consonants (alphabets other than a, e, i, o, u) or a word starting with consonant sound.
In the above question we have 3 blanks so we need to see the word before which the blank is placed and then decide the article accordingly.

1) Low season - It is an uncountable thing as low season or high season does not specify anything. It cannot be measured. So we don’t require any article here. Therefore, ‘no article’ comes before ‘low season’.
2) Most - Most is used to indicate a superlative form of word and it also does not specify anything remaining an uncountable word. So we don’t require any articles here also. Therefore ‘no article’ comes before ‘most’.
3) Hotels - The word hotel is used to refer to a particular place. So we’ll use an article before hotels. Here hotels are referred specifically and thus we use a definite article which is ‘the’. Therefore, ‘the’ comes before ‘hotels’.

Additional information: Articles are used before nouns. They are adjectives. An article may be definite or indefinite.

Hence the correct answer is option ‘A’.

Note: Inserting articles unnecessarily makes the sentence grammatically incorrect too.