The present longitudinal study examined the role of a broader repertoire of oral language skills in predicting reading comprehension difficulties within an extended Simple View of Reading model. Ninety-one Greek children were assessed on listening comprehension, morphological awareness, vocabulary, reading accuracy, and reading fluency in Grade 2. Next, they were assessed on a standardized reading comprehension measure at the beginning and at the end of Grade 3. Based on their performance, they were classified into a group with reading comprehension difficulties ( N = 39) and a typically developing group ( N = 52). Hierarchical binary logistic regressions revealed that listening comprehension, reading fluency, and morphological awareness significantly predicted reading comprehension difficulties, whereas vocabulary lost its predictive strength when morphological awareness entered into the equation. These findings underline the substantial role of morphological awareness in predicting reading comprehension difficulties, supporting an extended Simple View of Reading model. Moreover, they suggest that although vocabulary remains an important factor, its role appears to be rather limited and possibly mediated by morphological awareness. Implications for both the assessment of reading comprehension difficulties and intervention policy are discussed.

The present longitudinal retrospective study examined in a sample of 123 Greek-speaking children whether the raw score growth in a broad range of oral language and reading skills from Grade 1 to Grade 3 differs among children with persistent reading comprehension difficulties (pRCD; N = 49) identified in Grade 3, those exhibiting a resolving tendency of RCD (rRCD; N = 16), and typically developing (TD; N = 58) children. Children were classified into the respective groups, based on their performance on standardized reading comprehension measures in Grades 1, 2, and 3. They were, also, assessed on phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), morphological awareness, vocabulary, word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, and text-reading fluency across the three Grades. Mixed ANOVAs showed that children with pRCD displayed slower growth in morphological awareness, word reading fluency, and text-reading fluency than the other two groups. Children with rRCD did not differ from TD children on these measures, but they exhibited a higher growth on RAN. Both groups of children with RCD outperformed TD children on the growth of phonological awareness and word reading accuracy, whereas no group differences revealed in vocabulary. Our results suggest that more rapid gains in morphological awareness, RAN, word reading fluency, and text-reading fluency over time might be associated with a resolving tendency of reading comprehension difficulties, providing valuable insights for intervention policy.