This study compares the English reading comprehension and ethical awareness of 7th grade students, when using either a directed reading-thinking activity (DR-TA), or a more traditional approach, involving tales of virtue based on His Majesty the King's teaching concepts. A randomized control group pretest-posttest design was used for the study, and the data were analyzed using one-way MANOVA and t-tests for dependent samples. The results showed a significant difference in English reading comprehension, and ethical awareness of learning English reading, between both groups at 0.01 level. Students through the DR-TA method had significantly higher English reading comprehension, and increased ethical awareness, at the 0.01 level.