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This paper compares two offline corpora for legal translations: the first one composed manually and the second automatically. In order to highlight the advantages of the one and the shortcomings of the other, if any, a translation project was carried out with two experienced translators. The participants translated two different supply contracts into their first language (Italian) by using the manually- and automatically-composed corpora. The manual corpus was qualitatively satisfactory and helpful, despite the lengthy building process. The automatic corpus was considered less accurate, albeit larger. The paper corroborates literature findings, as it is argued that legal corpora need not be large to be effective. It will also remark the usefulness of corpus analysis training before engaging in corpus-based translations.

Reading, writing, speaking, and listening are the four foundational skills in language learning. In language learning classrooms, students are guided to achieve proficiency in all or some of these skills in order to be able to use language effectively. Using a qualitative approach, the study investigates the perspectives of some students of Swahili, a Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL), about their language skills. Specifically, the study investigates the goals of the students regarding the development of their language skills, how the students develop their language skills, and the challenges they face in honing their language skills. The study revealed that the purposes for which students enroll in the language class and the challenges they face with the development of their language skills influence their perspectives on the various language skills. Thus, the findings confirmed existing research that students have diverse reasons for learning a language. The study encourages teachers of Swahili-as-a-foreign-language (SFL) to purposefully guide students in developing their language skills by considering the students’ perspectives.

The current study sought to probe the role of CALL in language learning within the broader context of technology-mediated learning environments by analyzing the conversations between the learners and their peers and teachers. In order to serve this purpose, the study aimed to first analyze the interactions taking place in a CALL class and a virtual class, and then compare them with conversations in ordinary situations in terms of adjacency pairs. To this end, ten sessions of a CALL class were observed and recorded in an English institute in Yasouj, Iran, as the CALL class, and the same number of sessions were observed and recorded in an online English institute in the same context. The adjacency pairs were analyzed qualitatively, considering CA as the frame of reference. The in-depth analysis of data resulted in a couple of findings which indicated that the used adjacency pairs resembled those found in ordinary conversations. Moreover, it was found that question-answer adjacency pair is the most frequent type of adjacency pair in the two classes. Taken together, as compared with the studies carried out in natural settings, the conversations occurring in the two classes seemed to be natural to a great extent.

This case study aimed to demonstrate the ways in which a politician attempted to turn a political issue into a security matter through discourse. Drawing on Social Constructivism, Securitization Theory, and Classical Rhetoric, we examined Israeli Prime Minister’s speech given to the US Congress regarding the Iran nuclear deal on March 3, 2015. Our goal was to show how Netanyahu constructed Iran as a security threat to Israel and the whole world. In doing so, we flagged rhetorical devices Netanyahu employed in his speech and discussed his resorting to Aristotle’s Triad of Logos, Pathos, and Ethos to make his speech appealing to the audience and thus a successful securitization move. The study demonstrated that the five elements of securitization theory including the threatening subject and threatened object were systematically constructed in the speech through various discursive strategies and rhetorical devices. This study demonstrates benefits of discourse analysis for research in politics and international relations.

The present study attempted to ascertain the utility of adjusting pedagogic focus on form procedures to language learners’ cognitive styles. To this end, 100 (N=100) EFL learners (50 field dependent and 50 field independent) in four groups received vocabulary instruction by means of two instructional interventions comprising visual input enhancement as a technique of focus on form and the orthodox reading comprehension procedure. The study specifically sought to discover the predominant and consequential factors of vocabulary learning and to take account of the foreseeable, feasible, and presumed interaction between the pertinent variables. The results of the study indicated that instruction type and cognitive styles significantly impacted the learners’ vocabulary learning. Additionally, the foregoing factors interacted and swayed the learners’ acquisition of the apposite second language words. The results of the study may delineate appropriate lines of research for further empirical investigation.

The most common and natural thing which happens when two languages have contact with each other is the interchange of some elements between them, epigrammatically referred to as borrowing. The most widespread type of borrowing occurs at the level of lexicon. Persian has borrowed a multitude of terms from Sumerian, Sanskrit, Greek, Parthian, Sogdian, Khwarizmi, Arabic, Syriac, Mongolian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, English, and French. This study is an etymological exploration and dissection of Sogdian loanwords in Modern Persian. Sogdian language belongs to the Middle Eastern Iranian languages. It was used as a lingua franca throughout the Eastern Silk Road from the sixth to the tenth centuries. Roughly from the tenth century, it lost its significance due to both the development of Dari Persian and the gradual influence of the Arabic and Turkish languages. The Sogdian loanwords introduced to Persian have undergone both phonetic and semantic changes. Some non-Persian words, such as Sanskrit, Turkish, and Chinese words, have been introduced into Persian through the Sogdian language.

In this interview, Mohammad Hassan Tahririan reflects on his experiences, perceptions, and views about English for Specific Purposes (ESP) by first identifying the differences between the General English Language and ESP courses, and then pinpointing recent practices of teaching ESP. He discusses the future directions and areas of ESP research in Iran and points out some challenges that both ESP learners and teachers encounter during learning and teaching the courses. He also emphasizes that if stakeholders insist on offering ESP courses, the required conditions should be provided. If the students are not convinced that learning English is a must for them, imposing ESP courses on them will not be much different from unwanted General English courses. Tahririan believes that the future of most EFL programs in Iran will be in ESP, if understood and offered as expected.