Master of Arts (Instructional Design & Technology)

This study attempts to describe the complex design processes that Chinese Language teachers undergo while designing comprehension tests with and without the use of a corpus-based language support tool. Using TPACK as a theoretical framework, two Chinese Language teachers’ reasons for making the decisions on choice of vocabulary, changes to original passages given, sentence construction of the questions and answers and formation of distractor options for the multiple-choice response were found to render significant bearings on the validity of the test papers. It was found that among the seven TPACK constructs, PCK and TCK featured most prominently in teachers’ consideration. The teachers engaged in complex processes which interweave to influence their decisions on selection of texts, language used in the question texts and the use of distractors, bearing in mind how the content may be represented to test students’ higher and lower order thinking skills. Implications for the use of TPACK for analyzing teachers’ assessment design decisions as well as suggestions for improving the corpus-based language support tool are discussed.