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Help Professor Higgins grade a research paper by choosing natural English collocations. Select ALL the phrases that correctly and naturally complete his feedback sentence.
"While your topic is fascinating, I must warn you that your final hypothesis is _____."
The correct answers are highly controversial, highly unlikely, and highly beneficial.
Highly is an adverb used to express a high degree, but it generally pairs with gradable adjectives related to probability, opinions, or quality (like controversial, unlikely, and beneficial).
We do not use "highly" with extreme or absolute adjectives. For those, we use different adverbs:
- Instead of "highly huge," we say absolutely huge.
- Instead of "highly impossible," we say completely impossible.