Background knowledge and language proficiency have been the main variables that relate to reading comprehension. Both have positive effects on the students' reading comprehension performance. The need to teach students appropriate reading strategies is one of the important aspects in teaching reading and it should not be overlooked because reading strategies are used consciously by readers to comprehend texts. Readers with higher background knowledge consisting of topic familiarity, cultural knowledge and previous experience before reading a text would comprehend the text better. Thus, the activation of background knowledge reading strategy is crucial to provide a better pathway in helping the students in their reading comprehension performance.