The present study examined the contributions of vocabulary knowledge, syntactic skills, and oral narrative skills to sentence reading comprehension among Chinese junior elementary school children. Various language and reading measures were administered to 85 Chinese normally-achieving children at Grades 2 and 3 in Hong Kong. Results showed that vocabulary knowledge and oral narrative skills contributed significantly to word order skills, an important syntactic skill in Chinese. Vocabulary knowledge contributed to word recognition directly and contributed to sentence comprehension indirectly through word recognition and syntactic skills; and syntactic skills contributed to sentence comprehension directly. These findings suggest that while vocabulary knowledge is important for Chinese word reading, syntactic word order plays a central role in Chinese sentence comprehension. The implications of these findings for our theoretical understanding of the Simple View of Reading, as well as reading instruction, will be discussed. Copyright © 2020 Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada.

Introduction. This study examines the impact of the availability of reading resources in the school, the classroom, the home and the social environment on the reading proficiency of Grade Four primary school students in Hong Kong.Method. Data about the reading performance of Hong Kong students in the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study is reported. The survey data of 3,875 Hong Kong primary school students’ reading performances were analysed.Analysis. The survey data of 3,875 Hong Kong primary school students’ reading performances and their access to out-of-school or in-school reading resources were statistically analysed using multilevel modeling.Findings. The analysis revealed that the number of books at home, the time readers spent reading at home, the literacy facilities in the school and in the home and the children’s use of school and local libraries significantly impacted their reading attainment. The results also showed the positive impact of home reading facilities and encouragement, and the use of public and school resources on the students’ reading attainment.Conclusion. This study applied multilevel modeling to simultaneously evaluate the impact of reading resources located in family, classroom and library on students’ reading attainments. It demonstrated the importance of access to reading materials in home and family environments for students’ reading attainment. Copyright © 2019 the authors.