Abstract The main objective this study was to investigate effect of short stories on improving students’ reading comprehension skills. Based on control group and experimental group pre test/ post test quasi–expetrimental design, the study was conducted 81 grade 11 students in Tach Armachiho Woreda at Ras Amoraw wubineh Tesema preparatory and secondary school. Fom the total of 122 grade 11 students enrolled in 2009E.C. acadamic year and assigned 3 sections (A-C), A(n=41) and C(n=40) were used as experimental and control group respectively. The groups were intact and the researcher was assigned to teach the two groups. Due to this convinient sampling techniques was used to select the study groups,and lottery method was employed to determine the experimental and control group. The data collection instrument used in this study were tests and rating scale questionnaire. To make sure the two groups pre intervention reading comprehension level of understanding, pre tests were administered and to measure the two groups post intervention reading comprehension improvement, post tests were given.To attain the objective of the study, reading comprehension tests were used before and after the treatment to measure the equivalence of the two groups with regard to their level of reading comperehension.The questionnaire used to measure more of the experimental students’appraisal rate about the intervention program.For data analysis,quantitative approach was used. Quantitative approach was used for the data collected through the tests and questionnaire in the target population.The tests score were computed independent t-test and the data from the questionnaire were computed using percentage, calculated mean,expected mean and devetion. To find the value of the independent t-test and paired sample t-test analyses SPSS version 20 soft-ware program was used. The pre tests result independent t-test exposed uniformily between the two groups with a little variation, a fact that was often expected any group of learners. The findings from the post test asserted that the EG showed significant reading comprehension improvement over that of the CG in significant pre-to-post reading achievement test score improvement was not seen the study. Generally, short stories in EFL class are effective to arouse students’reading comprehension skills.To this end, it recommends that EFL teachers to incorporate short stories in Grade 11th language teaching program. To material writers to give consideration for the inclusion of effective and adequate literary texts(short stories)in to English textbooks, and to those who are interested to conduct further study in the area. Key words: Reading comprehension, Short stories, Genre, literary texts, non literary texts