Examining an extended simple view of reading in Chinese

Abstract

PURPOSE: The simple view of reading (SVR) proposes that reading comprehension is the product of two constructs, namely decoding and language comprehension. Although this view has received much support in alphabetic languages, it has been challenged for missing some important constructs like fluency. The present study examined the adequacy of an extended SVR in a nonalphabetic writing system, Chinese. METHOD: Participants were 199 Chinese children of Grades 1 to 4 recruited in Hong Kong. The children were given Chinese measures on decoding (character reading, word reading, and spelling), language comprehension (morphological awareness, vocabulary, morphosyntactic skills, and discourse skills), fluency (Chinese digit RAN, English digit RAN, and English letter RAN), and passage reading comprehension. RESULTS: We examined the contributions of decoding, language comprehension, and fluency to reading comprehension in four models using Structural Equation Modeling. The best fitting model was the one with a significant direct effect of language comprehension but a nonsignificant direct effect of decoding on reading comprehension. The effect of decoding on reading comprehension was fully mediated by fluency. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that apart from decoding and language comprehension, fluency may also be an essential component for adequate reading comprehension as automatic word retrieval may free up capacity for meaning extraction and integration in text comprehension. To attain good comprehension in reading, separate instruction on promoting accurate word recognition, various levels of oral language skills, fluent and automatic text retrieval and processing would be important.