For example, a question based on a passage about an artist who “vacated” from a tradition of landscape painting, asks whether it would be better to substitute the word “evacuated,” “departed” or “retired,” or to leave the sentence unchanged. (The right answer is “departed.”)ADDED: The new form of question is quite good... unless the intent is to take away an advantage held by young people who grow up with parents who speak well. It is relatively easy, I would think, to study lists of difficult vocabulary words and tricks about how to figure out the meaning of a word — e.g., matutinal — from its parts. It is much harder to study the way words appear in context. Yes, you can pick that up through reading a lot of well-written material, but words in context fill the environment of young people with educated, articulate parents present in the home, having conversations. The way words appear in context is, for them, deeply ingrained, easy, and natural.
Perhaps the idea of the change is to disadvantage the overachieving, drudge-like student.