A model of reading comprehension in Chinese elementary school children

• A model of Chinese reading comprehension for elementary school children
• Effects of RAN and morphological awareness on comprehension were via word reading.
• Syntactic skills and discourse skills had direct effects on reading comprehension.
• Findings supported the universality of the models of reading comprehension.

The relationships of reading-related skills (rapid naming, morphological awareness, syntactic skills, discourse skills, and verbal working memory) and word reading to reading comprehension were examined among 248 Chinese fourth graders in Hong Kong. Multiple regression analysis results showed that syntactic skills (word order knowledge, morphosyntactic knowledge), discourse skills (sentence order knowledge) and verbal working memory contributed significant unique variance to reading comprehension after word reading was controlled for. Path analysis results showed that syntactic skills, discourse skills and verbal working memory had significant direct effects on reading comprehension, while rapid naming and morphological awareness had indirect effects on reading comprehension through word reading. These findings, in part, support the models of reading comprehension developed for alphabetic writing systems, but also reflect the unique Chinese language learning experience of Chinese children in Hong Kong.