The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using cognitive strategies namely note making and underlining, on the performance of Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension. In doing so, 60 female grade four high school EFL learners were selected from a larger population by means of a language proficiency test (NELSON test). They were then divided randomly into three groups, each group consisting of 20 homogeneous students: two experimental groups i.e. note making and underlining, and one control group. The experimental groups were instructed to apply note making and underlining reading strategies on the same reading materials while the control group received the placeboes of reading comprehension materials. The treatment period on the experimental groups lasted 10 weeks.