This study is conducted to examine the relationship between Iranian male and female EFL learners' language proficiency to infer native writers' ideologies in reading journalistic texts. In order to answer the research questions, two news reports were selected from Time and The Week magazines. Reading comprehensions and inference question were constructed for each news report. Conducted in a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework, van Dijk's (2000) framework has been used to detect and to reveal the discursive strategies used in these two news reports. First, the success placement test then, two reading comprehension tests based on the findings of van Dijk's (2000) framework, including inference questions were administered. 61 participants (21 male and 40 female) took part in tests. To this end, the results were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that the Iranians EFL learners are not capable enough in inferring writer's ideologies in reading journalistic texts. The estimated correlation showed that there is a positive correlation between inferencing and language proficiency. This correlation revealed that as learners' language proficiency develops, their ability in inferencing writers' ideologies in journalistic texts improves. Also, the results of the comparison between male and female performance in inferring inference questions showed that there is not any significant difference between male and female. Possible implications of the study as well as some suggestions for further studies have been discussed.
