Recent research, treating interest as an emotion, indicates the cognitive appraisals of novelty-complexity and coping potential predict interest. This appraisal-based model of interest has not yet been applied to educational research. The present study evaluated the significance of the model regarding the activity of reading expository, academic-oriented text, and assessed whether a third previously untested appraisal of goal relevance could predict interest as well. Sixty-five undergraduate psychology students, 41 females and 24 males, completed several instruments--assessments of interest and three appraisals across time, experimental texts, and a measure trait curiosity as a control variable. Goal relevance, was shown to predict interest across the sample to a statistically significant degree (Unstandardized [beta] = 0.567; t = 6.258; p less than 0.001), displaying more predictive power than the combined effects of the original two appraisals. These results and the study's implications are discussed.