This study is aimed to get a thorough insight into the students’ beliefs as well as the effectiveness of the use of Direct Reading and Thinking Activity (DR-TA) in teaching and learning reading comprehension. The result, by that way, wishes to enhance better concurrence and implementation among teachers and educators. The subjects are 8 Pre-Intermediate non-English majored students at the Foreign Language Center- Institute of Foreign Language Training of Thu Dau Mot University. The instruments used are questionnaires, interviews and the scores of final tests.

In the accelerating pace of globalization and internationalization of trade, professionals from a wide range of organizations believed that English as an international language, which is a way of thinking, researching and practicing, was used in almost all areas of life, study, and work. That’s why the study's foremost objectives were to comprehend reading learning strategies used by English-majored students at Thu Dau Mot University. A quantitative method was used to conduct the research with a questionnaire divided into four parts. The subjects of this study are 100 English majors from the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Thu Dau Mot University. According to the results, the majority of students agree with the difficulties faced when learning English reading. Likewise, students also subscribe that they also use some reading learning strategies such as extensive reading strategy, the phonics strategy, the whole language strategy, reading comprehension strategy and vocabulary building strategy. Moreover, some solutions, such as the function of the word in the sentence, the main gist, guessing the unfamiliar word and reading aloud are recommended to them to read more effectively and improve their reading ability. Ultimately, some recommendations are made in the hope of helping both teachers and students. Keywords: challenges, English reading, reading learning strategies, Thu Dau Mot University