The present study classified Sino-Japanese (Kango) and native Japanese (Wago) words in texts to identify their effects on reading comprehension skills. Path analysis was conducted among semantic and phonological knowledge of Kango and Wago predicting reading comprehension skills. The results depicted that semantic and phonological knowledge of Wago showed direct influence on reading comprehension, while Kango affected reading comprehension indirectly via Wago. Consequently, the present study proposes that teaching semantic and phonological knowledge of Wago is the key to improving the Japanese reading comprehension of Chinese native speakers learning Japanese.
