In the context of globalization, English serves as a primary tool for international communication, making the cultivation of English reading comprehension skills particularly crucial. Cultural integration, as a teaching strategy that incorporates the target language culture into the teaching process, effectively enhances students’ English reading comprehension abilities. This study explores the impact of cultural integration on English reading comprehension ability, aiming to uncover mechanisms related to cultural background knowledge, reading interests and motivation, and reading strategies. The study finds that cultural integration significantly optimizes English reading teaching and proposes specific measures such as designing culturally integrated reading materials, conducting diverse teaching activities, and fostering teachers’ cross-cultural teaching abilities. These measures provide new insights and practical paths for English teaching.