In the present study, an exploratory approach (Oxford, Cho, Leung & Kim, 2004) to language learning is adopted which holds that the number and type of strategies used by Iranian learners might vary with respect to the difficulty of task and their L2 proficiency. In this regard, the term task is defined, its leading dimentions and charecteristics are put forward, and the nature of learning startegies is touched upon. In cosequence, a new direction of strategy assessment; namely, task-based strategy assessment is focused on to investigate the relationship between task presence and difficulty and the use of reading strategies. The employment of reading strategies was perused via a strategy-frequency questionnaire in which the subjects themselves reported their strategy use after completing some language tasks. The results revealed that neither task difficulty or proficiency level alone, nor their interaction had a statistically significant effect on the reported frequency of reading strategy use.