The Student Aptitude Test is altering its language emphasis beginning in 2016. Rather than require SAT-takers to figure out the meanings of obscure words, the test will focus more on high-utility words that are more likely to be used in real life.

Often these words have different meanings depending on context, which means test-takers still will have to use a little gray matter to figure out how these words are being used. In a sample question, for instance, the SAT would give students the following sentence: “The coming decades will likely see more intense clustering of jobs, innovation, and productivity in a smaller number of bigger cities and city-regions.” Students then would be asked to define the word intense. Does it mean A) emotional? B) concentrated? C) brilliant? D) determined?

(The answer is B…but you already knew that.)

The hope, SAT officials say, is to stop students from memorizing obscure words solely for the SAT (which they’d surely forget as soon as the pencil is put down) and instead test their understanding of how language actually is used.

“We don’t need to have a bunch of memorized definitions in our heads,” says Margaret G. McKeown, who helped change the SAT’s ways. “It’s an integration of the sentence and the word that’s going to help us. The more they have to integrate, the more that reflects what they need to do with a vocabulary as a reader.” (Time)

Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and his two children. Follow him on Twitter.