Question

Fill in the blank with the suitable degree of adverb from the given options.
A good teacher is ______________ respected by all.
a) More highly
b) Most highly
c) Highly
d) Higher

Answer 1

Hint: Adverbs are those words that qualify another word based on the manner it is used or to what extent a certain action happens or how extreme or dull the action is. Adverbs can be used to qualify almost all words such as nouns, another adverb, adjectives and verbs. Adverbs can be easily identified since they are formed by the addition of “ly” to the adjectives, though there are some exceptions.

Complete answer:
Here, the sentence proclaims to what extent the teacher is respected by all. Since, the teacher is a good teacher, the word is often close to the extreme take on the word.
Now, looking at the options given above,
More highly: more doesn’t precede highly, since this is a wrong format. This is because “more” is used to highlight the higher portion or attribute when two things, people or feelings are compared with each other, while highly refers to adequacy; similar to a superlative degree, that is, to an extremely high degree.
Most highly: first of all, we are not comparing the teacher and “most” is not to be used with highly, making the format wrong. Since “most” and “highly” refers to superlative degree and the latter, extreme degree, respectively, both cannot be used together (both are adverbs in this case).
Highly: is the apt adverb to fill the blank in the given question. Since we are not comparing between two teachers, rather we are generalizing the attribute to an extreme degree, the word “highly” is apt.
Higher: Here, we are not comparing two teachers (comparative degree is not to be used) . Hence, this word is invalid. Eg: The first book stack is higher than the other.
Hence, Option c, is the correct answer to the above question.

Note:
"Highly" should not be confused with "higher" since there is no comparison between two specific teachers. Here, it is an attribute which is qualified as more than adequate; it is not a comparison between two levels, hence, usage of “higher” would be wrong.