Word Order Anagram Test and Reading Comprehension in EFL: What Type of Word Order Awareness Should Be Focused on in Teaching?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between word order knowledge and EFL reading comprehension among high school students. The participants were seventy-four second year senior high school students. A written recall test, and three types of sentence anagram tests (basic, intra-phrasal and inter-phrasal anagram tests) were administered to all 70 students. There were significant correlations between word order tests and reading comprehension. Moreover, a 3 (the reading comprehension group) × 3 (types of anagram tests) two-way ANOVA revealed significant interactions. The results indicate that regardless of the levels of reading comprehension, inter-phrasal anagram task is the most difficult. However, the high-level group also shows the significant difference in intra-phrasal anagram task. Therefore, it is concluded that both intra-phrasal word order instructions and inter-phrasal word order instructions should be focused on more for better reading comprehension.