the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of instruction through debate on male and female efl learners’ reading comprehension, to examine the differences between the performance of male and female participants on the five dimensions of cctst including analysis, evaluation, inference, deductive reasoning, and inductive reasoning, and to examine the differences between male and female efl learners’ perceptions in the experimental group towards instructing ct through debate. 88 intermediate learners (of lahijan, guilan province, iran) out of 120, who were selected based on convenience sampling method participated in this study. the placement test, opt, was conducted to choose the intermediate sample. the study utilized a quantitative research method with two kinds of design; experimental pre-post tests and a quantitative content analysis design, respectively. 44 participants represented the experimental group and 44 participants represented the control group. the experimental group received some treatment in the form of “the meeting-house debate” strategy, while the control group received no such treatment. before inserting treatment, both groups participated in the pre-tests. the results of the pre-tests indicated that the participants of the two groups were homogenous with respect to their ct skills and reading comprehension ability. after one month and a half treatment of experimental group, both groups participated in the post-tests. data analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics procedures. the results of two-way anova indicated that there was no significant main effect for gender; i.e., there was not a significant difference between male and female learners’ scores on rtcrct. however, the main effect of participant was significant; i.e., a significant difference was found between control and experimental groups on rtcrct. also, the interaction between gender and participant was not significant. further, the results of independent samples t-test showed that there was no significant difference in the performance of male and female participants on the five dimensions of cctst, and there was no significant difference between male and female learners’ perceptions on the close-ended items of the questionnaire. it was concluded that instructing ct through debate had a positive impact on male and female efl learners’ reading comprehension. in addition, gender did not have a significant effect on the students’ ct skills. it was also concluded that gender did not have an effect on the students’ responses. further, the findings of students’ responses on the open-ended questions indicated that majority of the participants had positive views towards the debate technique. finally, implications for language teachers, material developers, and curriculum designers were also discussed.