Reading skill is one of the foundations to build critical thinking ability. The improvement of reading ability will help to cultivate students critical thinking and understanding ability. This paper focuses on the relationship between reading skills and critical thinking skills, and further analyzes and discusses the effectiveness of seventeen targeted strategies that are helpful to improve students learning ability and reading skills. Through the test on students from Mount Aloysius College, the researchers found out that there is a positive relationship between improving reading skills and critical thinking ability. Because of the importance of reading ability to critical thinking, the author suggests introducing effective developmental reading courses to help nursing students improve their learning ability. At the end of the article, the author gives some suggestions on the future research direction, such as expanding the experimental samples and changing the teaching methods.