The study investigated how transactional strategies could improve undergraduate students' reading and writing abilities. A quasi-experimental study was performed with two groups of students. Students in the control group were taught by the traditional method, while students in the experimental group were taught by transactional strategies. The research instruments included reading tests, summary writing tests, and an opinion questionnaire. Results from the statistical tests revealed that there were statistically significant differences in the posttest scores at the level of 0.05 between the two groups. The students studying with transactional strategies gained much higher scores than the ones studying with the traditional way. This study's findings contribute to a better understanding of the new approach and support the belief that transactional strategies should be taught in class in order to develop the reading performance of the students.