The paper examines explicit reading strategy instruction as an instrument for developing the reading literacy of learners of English. Reading literacy is treated not as a narrow comprehension skill but as an integrative competence combining cognitive, linguistic, strategic and metacognitive, sociocultural and digital components. The strategic and metacognitive component is argued to be the connecting link of the system: it is this component that converts linguistic resources into a controlled reading process and turns the product of reading into a communicative outcome. On the basis of terminological analysis, conceptual synthesis and a comparative analysis of international assessment frameworks, a three-phase model of strategy instruction — modelling, guided practice with decreasing support, and independent transfer — is substantiated, a working classification of strategies by the phase of the reading process is proposed, and a system of observable assessment indicators is formulated. The main methodological claim of the paper is that naming strategies is not teaching them: instruction produces an effect only when the learner selects a strategy for a given task, applies it and reflects on the outcome.