Direction: Apply standard prescriptive competitive-exam grammar. Fill in the…

Concept

Articles signal how a noun phrase is being presented. “a/an” introduces one non-specific singular count noun, while “the” identifies a specific noun.

English conventionally uses the zero article when a singular noun names a rank, title, or office assigned directly after verbs such as “appoint”, “elect”, “make”, or “choose”. In that structure, the noun functions as the conferred role.

Application

In “She was appointed as ____ head of the department”, “head of the department” names the office conferred on her and follows “appointed as” as a predicative complement. Under the prescriptive exam convention stipulated in the direction, the title therefore takes the zero article: “She was appointed as head of the department last year.”

Contrast

• “a” introduces one non-specific member of a class; that is not the title-complement construction used here.

• “an” also introduces one non-specific member and is additionally incompatible with the consonant sound /h/ at the start of “head”.

• “the” marks an independently specific referent, as in “The head of the department called a meeting”. Although “appointed as the head” occurs in ordinary usage, it is not the form selected by the stipulated prescriptive exam convention.

• “no article” gives the conventional title-complement form after “appointed as”.

Result

The blank takes no article, so the completed sentence is: “She was appointed as head of the department last year.”