Can't understand a lvl 1 WR question

Godfatherbob
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:19:39 +0000

Yup it’s true. I took an SAT the other day, and I missed four WR questions, one of which was a lvl 1; moreover, I don’t see why I got it wrong. Here it is:

Because our casserole was smelling surprisingly badly as it baked, the food science teacher came over to ask us what we had put in it. No error.

I said E: No error, and the answer is A. It sounded weird to me, but I can’t pinpoint anything grammatically incorrect about it. Smelling is a verb, so what follows it should be an adverb, as badly is. Surprisingly is another adverb, which is the correct part of speech to modify another adverb–unless you can’t modify adverbs?