The relationship between emotion and language may have an impact on reading comprehension of foreign language learners. Emotion-laden texts can affect L2 reading comprehension. This research tests the hypothesis that L2 reading comprehension are influenced by the emotive language that learners are exposed to. One hundred thirty-seven Saudi female L2 learners of English are presented with emotive texts. In Study 1, they are asked to read positive emotive-laden and neutral texts and in Study 2, negative emotive-laden and neutral texts. It is hypothesized that participants’ L2 reading comprehension are influenced by learners’ perception of positive and negative emotive-laden texts. The results show that both positive emotive-laden text and negative emotive-laden text influenced participants’ L2 comprehension. However, the positive emotive-laden text had a higher reading comprehension score than the negative and the positive emotive-laden text had a high size effect.  In addition, statistically significant positive correlation was found between reading comprehension and self-reported reading proficiency. However, the correlation coefficient for positive emotive-laden text was higher than the negative text. There were group differences between positive emotive-laden text and negative emotive-laden text in perceived feelings after reading in favor of positive emotive-laden text. This paper contributes to the debate between the role of emotions in reading comprehension of Arabic speakers and learners of English as a foreign language. We consider the impact of emotive language for language learning.

Keywords: Emotion-laden texts, reading comprehension, English as a foreign language, reading proficiency