Did anyone else take a "free" version of HSK?

[mirgcire]

The Confucius Institute, here in Portland Oregon, offered a "free" HSK (二) test. So, hoping to get some impression of the new HSK format, I signed up and took the test today. BTW, last year I took the "Basic" HSK and received a score of "B".

I am not sure what kind of test we took today, but it felt like a prototype. There were 4 or 5 distinct types of questions but not many of each. We had just 20 minutes to complete the test.

I was very surprised to find that the test was in pinyin. Each hanzi character had pinyin above it. The questions were remarkably simple until the last page. On the last page there were 2 sets of 4 questions. Each set had 6 answers labeled A-F, an example question, and 5 exam sentences number X through X+5. The exam monitor, speaking english, told us to match the numbered sentences with the A-F choices. But not even the example question gave any hint of the matching criteria.

All I can remember now is that one exam sentence was "医生说什么？" and the only thing I could match it with was "母亲让我们每天吃苹果."

After the test it occurred to me that the matching criteria might have been something like matching grammar patterns, but I didn't see anying in hanzi or English that might reveal the matching criteria.

Is there anyone else who took that test who might have some insight into this test?

By the way, there were approximately 40 test takers, 90% were under the age of 12 and most of them finished and left the room before the 20 minutes were up.