The study investigated the nature and patterns of errors in the oral reading of Chinese elementary school students. Participants were 32 Chinese fifth graders recruited from 4 different classes. Before the oral reading session, students were divided into high and low reading ability groups based on their performance on a reading comprehension test. The task for the students was to read aloud two expository texts, each containing approximately six to eight hundred characters and was selected by experienced teachers to ensure that the materials were age-and grade-appropriate. During each individual oral reading session, data were audio-recorded and later transcribed verbatim. The errors made by the students can be classified into 7 types: Substitution, Self-correction, Repetition, Omission, Insertion, Reversal, and Others. The three most commonly found reading errors were Substitution, Self-correction, and Repetition, each accounted for at least 18% of the total errors made by students in both high and low reading ability groups. Additional analysis focused on the predominant error type, Substitution, by further dividing the errors into 9 subtypes based on the cues (graphic, phonetic, or semantic） that students used. It is noteworthy that when students encountered unfamiliar characters, they tended to derive the pronunciations by using context-related semantic cues, which accounted for more than 40% of the total Substitution error type. When comparing the performance of students in high and low ability groups, results indicated that low ability students made significantly more Substitution type of errors, and their errors, in other types (e.g., Omission and Insertion） were also less semantically acceptable.