‏‎the purpose of the present study was to investigate the latent pattern underlying reading ability . some 272 male and female participants. english majors at the ba level , participated in the study. two valid tests were used in this study, the reading test developed exclusively for the purpose of this project and academic reading section of ielts. to investigate the possible latent underlying traits, factor analysis was conducted on the data. the final analysis showed that a nine-factor solution and eight-factor solution were the best explanations of the factor patterns. it is concluded that the reading ability consists of eight or nine major skills which are distinguishable and testable‎‏