Fill in the blanks with the correct pair of articles:
Shabnam bought ________ old sewing machine at the weekly market, but ________ machine stopped working within a week.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → an ... the
“An” before a vowel sound and “the” for a thing already named:
First blank: The word right after the blank decides between “a” and “an”. Here it is the describing word “old”, not “sewing machine”. “Old” begins with a vowel sound, so it takes “an”.
Second blank: “The” goes before a thing that has already been named in the sentence. The first part of the sentence already tells us about the sewing machine. So the second time it takes “the”.
Complete sentence: Shabnam bought an old sewing machine at the weekly market, but the machine stopped working within a week.