diff --git a/6.1-using-word-embeddings.ipynb b/6.1-using-word-embeddings.ipynb
index 8596b2a218..62510c1e43 100644
--- a/6.1-using-word-embeddings.ipynb
+++ b/6.1-using-word-embeddings.ipynb
@@ -354,7 +354,7 @@
     "    dir_name = os.path.join(train_dir, label_type)\n",
     "    for fname in os.listdir(dir_name):\n",
     "        if fname[-4:] == '.txt':\n",
-    "            f = open(os.path.join(dir_name, fname))\n",
+    "            f = open(os.path.join(dir_name, fname), encoding = "utf8")\n",
     "            texts.append(f.read())\n",
     "            f.close()\n",
     "            if label_type == 'neg':\n",