A componential model of reading in Chinese Pui-sze Yeung a , Connie Suk-han Ho b, ⁎, David Wai-ock Chan c , Kevin Kien-hoa Chung d a Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong b Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong c Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong d Department of Early Childhood Education, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Tai Po, Hong Kong abstract article info Article history: Received 5 August 2014 Received in revised form 17 November 2015 Accepted 20 November 2015 This study examined the interrelationships between linguistic comprehension skills (expressive vocabulary, word definition, oral narrative skills, and syntactic skills), decoding (word recognition and reading fluency) and reading comprehension (sentence comprehension and passage comprehension) among 369 Cantonese- speaking Chinese children in a 3-year longitudinal study from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling results suggested that the component skills of Chinese reading comprehension can be categorized into two major components: linguistic comprehension and decoding. The former is made up of oral narrative skills and syntactic skills, while the latter is made up of word recognition and reading fluency. The additive (i.e., linear) model with linguistic comprehension and decoding as predictors of reading comprehen- sion provided an adequate account of the data in most analyses. The product of linguistic comprehension (syn- tactic skills) and decoding (word recognition/reading fluency) accounted for a significant amount of variance in passage comprehension at Grade 1 in addition to the linear contribution of linguistic comprehension and decoding. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Chinese Oral language skills Decoding Reading comprehension Simple view of reading 1. Introduction 1.1. Simple view of reading The simple view of reading (SVR) (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) was one of the earliest attempts to postulate the nature of the relationship between oral language and reading. Gough and Tunmer's model of the proximal causes of reading performance captured the interplay of print skills and oral language in reading by positing that reading com- prehension is equal to the product of two broad components: linguistic comprehension and decoding. Although the simplicity of the SVR model in conceptualizing the complexity of the reading process is widely acknowledged, there has been debate over the definitions of and the relationships between the two core constructs in the model. Hoover and Gough defined linguistic comprehension as “the ability to take lexical information (i.e., semantic information at the word level) and derive sentence and discourse interpretations” (Hoover & Gough, 1990, p. 131), and decoding as “efficient word recognition” (Hoover & Gough, 1990, p. 130). Although the model has been well supported by empirical findings, there has been an increasing demand for a more refined conceptualiza- tion of the model (e.g., Kirby & Savage, 2008; Ouellette & Beers, 2010). The present study aimed to revisit the SVR in the context of a non- alphabetic language, Chinese, and in light of the following three areas of concern over the conceptualization of the different components of the SVR. First, questions have been raised about the adequacy of listening comprehension skills, one of the most commonly used measures of lin- guistic comprehension, in capturing the contribution of oral language to reading comprehension. Many studies on the validity of the SVR for readers of alphabetic languages have used listening comprehension measures to assess linguistic comprehension, whether among young children (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Nation & Snowling, 2004; Stothard & Hulme, 1992) or college students (e.g., Gernsbacher, Varner, & Faust, 1990; Palmer, MacLeod, Hunt, & Davidson, 1985). However, in addition to listening comprehension skills, oral vocabulary, semantic skills, and grammatical skills are likely to contribute to the construct of linguistic comprehension. This has found some support in recent studies on reading comprehension. For example, in several studies, oral vocabulary explained a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension even after the contribution of listening compre- hension and decoding was controlled (e.g., Braze, Tabor, Shankweiler, & Mencl, 2007; Nation & Snowling, 2004; Ouellette & Beers, 2010). In a 2-year longitudinal study by Muter, Hulme, Snowling, and Stevenson (2004), oral vocabulary and syntactic skills were found to predict reading comprehension among beginning readers. Oral vocabulary and syntactic skills were significant predictors of English reading com- prehension among children in Grades 2 to 5 (e.g., Geva & Farnia, 2012; Learning and Individual Differences 45 (2016) 11–24 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: patcyy@hku.hk (P. Yeung), shhoc@hku.hk (C.S. Ho), davidchan@cuhk.edu.hk (D.W. Chan), kevin@ied.edu.hk (K.K. Chung). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2015.11.007 1041-6080/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Learning and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lindif