The application of multimedia in English reading teaching can stimulate students’ enthusiasm for English learning and improve students’ classroom listening efficiency. This paper focuses on the characteristics and roles of multimedia technology applied to English reading teaching and proposes innovative teaching methods based on multimedia to realize the communication between teachers and students in a multimedia environment, the optimal integration of multimedia and traditional teaching, and the scientific design of multimedia teaching content. The innovative teaching methods were applied to a school, and a semester teaching experiment was conducted for two classes. At the conclusion of the semester, the experimental class scores saw a significant increase from 50.18 to 76.26 on the pre-test. The control class used the traditional teaching mode without any multimedia application, the teaching effect was average, and there was even a regression of students’ reading comprehension ability in some of the examined items, and there was no significant change in the distribution of the intervals. In the experimental class, in the application of multimedia reading comprehension teaching mode, the grades step up and gradually improve, the results of the interval distribution of the high scores of the progress of the section, the end of the period more than 90 points for 12 students. 85% of the experimental class students think that multimedia technology is an important reason for improving their grades. To sum up, multimedia teaching can provide scientific and reasonable course content and teaching arrangements, maximize teaching efficiency, and make significant progress in students’ reading comprehension abilities.