Question

Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate words.
A: _____ Paul play rugby?
B: No, he can’t. But he can _____ baseball.
A. Can/ play
B. Can/ plays
C. Does/ play
D. Does/ plays

Answer 1

Hint: We use ‘can’ to indicate the potentiality of a person to perform a task in the present or future time. ‘Play’ is a verb that indicates the action of playing a game or sport.

Complete answer:
As given in the hint, ‘can’ is a modal verb.
Modal verbs are those verbs that are used to indicate potentiality or probability. For example- Will, shall, can, could, may, etc.
In the given question: We will use ‘can’ because we can see the usage of ‘can’t’ in B sentence. Also, ‘can’ is used for highlighting Paul’s capability of playing Rugby. And we will use ‘play’ because it is preceded by ‘can’.
Hence, the correct answer is; Can Paul play rugby? No, he can’t. But he can play baseball.
Now, let’s examine the given options-
Option A. ‘Can/play’ is the correct option because ‘can’ is used for indicating ability and ‘play’ is preceded by ‘can’.
Option B. ‘Can/plays’ is an incorrect option because we cannot use ‘plays’ with ‘can’.
Option C. ‘Does/play’ is an incorrect option because ‘does’ is not used for indicating ability or potentiality.
Option D. ‘Does/plays’ is an incorrect option because ‘does’ is not used for indicating ability or potentiality. The correct answer is Option ‘a’.

Note: Keep in mind, we only use the form of ‘do’ when the person knows how to perform an action or task. Also, modal verbs are generally followed by the first form of a verb.