This study examined the role of phonological recoding in English as a foreign language reading processes from two aspects: reading conditions and text complexity. The results showed that reading conditions had no significant effect on subjects reading comprehension scores and learning efficiency index. It seems that the participants in this study did not rely on phonological recoding for English reading comprehension and were able to access meaning via orthographic semantic route. While phonological recoding did not significantly affect subjects’ performance on reading comprehension tests, it might be initially involved in the word-recognition processes during reading. Finally, text complexity did not have much influence on subjects’ dependency on phonological recoding during reading comprehension.