Ten third-grade Puerto Rican children in New York City, representative of students with reading difficulties from low-income families, were taught emotionally charged or neutral words. Twenty words, 10 emotionally charged and 10 neutral, were taught to the subjects on 4 successive days. Pretesting on printed-word recognition was conducted before instruction. Five days after the last teaching session, the subjects were post-tested for printed-word recognition and recall. Results indicated that despite the fact that the emotionally-charged word performance at the outset of the study was significantly lower than the neutral word performance, the subjects made significantly greater gains in emotionally-charged words over gains for neutral words, and the final performance level for printed-word recognition for both groups of words was identical. The post-test also showed that a significantly greater number of emotionally-charged words was recalled when compared to the number of neutral words recalled. The author concluded that the content of reading materials and the methods for teaching them should be revised so that reading deals with events, ideas, and feelings which are emotionally significant to the child. Tables and references are included. (AW)