Question

Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate words.
On the New Year Eve, some of ______ pupils stayed at ______ school later than usual.
(A) the/no article
(B) the/the
(C) no article/the
(D) a/a
(E) the/a

Answer 1

Hint: There are two types of article- Definite and Indefinite. In the above sentence we are talking about a definite thing, that is, pupils. Therefore, a definite article must be used here. We may not require an article in the second.

Complete answer:
Before using the articles one must be thoroughly aware of their usage.
We use the articles ‘a’ and ‘an’ when we talk about a noun in a sentence for the first time. We use the article ‘an’ before a noun starting with vowel (a,e,i,o,u) or a word that has initial sound of vowel when spoken and we use ‘a’ before a noun starting with a consonant (alphabets other than a,e,i,o,u) or a word that has initial sound of consonant when spoken. The is used when in a sentence we are talking about a noun that has already been referred to in that sentence previously. The is used with a whole class of animals, rivers, seas, mountain ranges etc.

Investigating the given options one by one:
In the first blank we will use ‘the’ as in the sentence is talking about pupils definitely, that is, a definite number of people or so. Therefore, we use ‘the’ in this blank.
In the first blank we do not use any article because the name of that school is not mentioned and in such a case we don't use any article. If the name of the school would have been mentioned then we would have used the article ‘the’. So we leave this blank empty.

Additional information:
A proper noun is a noun that is used to talk about the name of a person, place, animal or thing (Example - Microsoft, Harry, Paris) whereas a common noun talks about a group of people, animals, things (school, country, dog).

Hence the correct answer is option ‘A’.

Note: New year eve is not any particular time. If the sentence would have been ‘ 5 pm in the evening’ then only the article would have been used, otherwise not as in the above case.