Concordance-based Material as a Form-focused Solution to Constituent Misordering

This paper investigates the effectiveness of concordance-based material for an EFL problem—misordering in expressions of measurement. A specifically designed pre- and posttest is developed for testing Thai students’ ability to use the expression. The sample comprises four groups of university students in their first and second years (two groups each). One first year group and one sophomore group are experimental ones, and the other two control groups. In the pretest and the posttest, they are all instructed to arrange chunks (i.e., constituents) into complete sentences. The experimental groups are exposed to a concordance-based, self-study material before taking the posttest. An ANOVA shows that they arrange the constituents in the posttest significantly more accurately at p <= .001 than do the control groups. The material is argued for raising their awareness of the distinct ordering. Hence, concordance-based material could be applied to other form-focused problems in EFL.