1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for use in the computerized development of sentence-based test items, the computer-readable storage medium containing instructions for causing a computer to execute steps comprising: displaying a graphical user interface on a display, the graphical user interface comprising a database selection field, a sentence pattern entry field, an option pane, and an output pane; searching a database for one or more sentences of a particular syntax based upon a user-specified syntax pattern entered in the sentence pattern entry field, the one or more sentences matching the syntax pattern, the one or more sentences to be used for producing one or more sentence-based test items; generating one or more responses corresponding to the one or more sentences; and producing the one or more sentence-based test items based upon the one or more sentences and the one or more responses.
2. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein the database selection field is used to select the database, wherein the database comprises text material.