The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of positive and negative emotions on students' motivated learning behavior (i.e., their intended effort) to learn English in the Hungarian context. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that we examined a number of positive and negative emotions and their effects on enjoyment as well as anxiety. The latter two emotions were linked to students' motivated learning behavior, too. Data were collected with the help of a validated questionnaire in Hungary, in the school years of 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. In order to fulfil our aim, we carried out structural equation modeling (SEM) for two groups of students, males (n = 467) and females (n = 682), as we were also interested in gender-related similarities and differences. The most important findings show that emotions like curiosity and pride can exert their influence through enjoyment while confusion and shame can do the same via anxiety. However, pride, boredom and apathy neither fed into the overarching emotions of enjoyment and anxiety, nor did they influence motivated learning behavior directly in our sample, which might signal the possible contribution of more cognitively oriented mediators. Finally, no gender differences could be identified regarding the relationships of the constructs.