The essential idea of the element-free Galerkin method (EFG) is that moving least-squares (MLS) approximation are used for the trial and test functions with the variational principle (weak form). By using the weighted orthogonal basis function to construct the MLS interpolants, we derive the formulae for an improved element-free Galerkin (IEFG) method for solving three-dimensional problems in linear elasticity. There are fewer coefficients in improved moving least-squares (IMLS) approximation than in MLS approximation. Also fewer nodes are selected in the entire domain with the IEFG method than is the case with the conventional EFG method. In this paper, we selected a few example problems to demonstrate the applicability of the method.