Design Proposal Of Computerized Adaptive Testing For High-frequency Vocabulary Of Chinese As A Foreign Language

With the rapid development of Chinese economy and the rising of overall national strength, China’s international infulence is growing. The whole world is eager to know China’s national state as well as its splendid culture.“Chinese fever”is becoming a popular word and the whole world is setting off an upsurge of studying Chinese. The importance of vocabulary acquisition research and vocabulary testing is revealed gradually. In the context of a global focus on Chinese learning, increasing foreign students come to China to learn Chinese. Meanwhile, studies on Chinese vocabulary acquisition and testing attract people’s attention. However, due to different background and varied Chinese proficiency of foreign students, it is hard to know their true Chinese vocabulary proficiency, which brings difficulty to Chinese vocabulary teaching and testing. Traditional Chinese vocabulary testing that focuses on foreign students is not only time-consuming and energy- consuming, but possesses low precision. Besides, information concerning to which aspects the examinees has mastered or not cannot be fully reported. Nevertheless, the aim of test is not only to get the final scores but to enhance efficiency, that is, use the least time and items to organize a test which can truly reflect examinees’Chinese vocabulary proficiency and know the specific performance of examinees on Chinese vocabulary. Computerized Adaptive Testig (CAT) can perfectly achieve these goals. It can overcome the weakness of traditional testing, so it possesses great potential to establish itself in the education testing of the future.CAT is an important part of the computer assisted instruction and modern measurement research. Its peculiarity lies in constructing an optimal test for each examinee, which is realized by estimating the examinees’ability after administering each item and selecting the next item based on the current ability estimate. It can be considered as a personalized testing as it can actively tailor the test to examinees’ability.To improve the efficiency and precision of Chinese vocabulary test, this thesis researches into the Chinese high-frequency vocabulary, and applies theories of CAT, Chinese testing, Second Language Acquisiton (SLA), and Chinese vocabulary item types to the design proposal of CAT for high-frequency vocabulary of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The main procedures are as follows:(1) Chinese lexical competence is defined on the ground of dimensional theories of lexical competence,Chinese Language Proficiency Scales for Speakers of Other Languages (the Scales) and International Curriculum for Chinese Language Education (ICCLE). In this thesis, it is a three-dimensional framework, which comprises the following dimensions: (a) vocabulary size; (b) vocabulary depth; (c) vocabulary familiarity. Besides, Chinese lexical competence is classified into six bands and Scales of Proficiency for High-frequency Vocabulary of CFL are drawn.(2) Based on item response theory (IRT), Scales of Proficiency for High-frequency Vocabulary of CFL as well as language testing theory, this thesis completes the design of vocabulary size testing, vocabulary depth testing as well as vocabulary familiarity testing. For each module, sample test is offered.(3) A CAT prototype system is put forward on the basis of the whole design. Due to limited time and resources, this system is less than perfect.The research on CAT in China is still on its preliminary stage. No research focuses on CAT for high-frequency vocabulary of CFL is reported yet. This thesis tries to devise a design proposal of CAT for high-frequency vocabulary of CFL and designs a prototype system in view of the design proposal, hoping to enlighten Chinese vocabulary testing and providing bases for Chinese placement teaching,Chinese placement testing and Chinese international promotion. .