Abstract The present study examined general lexical knowledge in predicting Character Recognition and Dictation in Chinese grade 3 students with word recognition difficulties. Thirty students were examined in measures of nonverbal intelligence, non-character recognition, radical position, and phonetic awareness. The results showed that: 1. Grade 3 students with word recognition difficulties have developed basic knowledge of positional regularity of Chinese characters. 2. Character Recognition correlated significantly with familiar-regular, familiar-irregular, and unfamiliar-regular words. Dictation correlated significantly with non-character recognition, familiar-regular, and unfamiliar-regular words. 3. General lexical knowledge predicted both Character Recognition and Dictation.