This paper targets the vital issues of forming intercultural competence in the legally oriented English course. Nonnative law students whose first or native language is Armenian often find it challenging to communicate with their native English-speaking colleagues on legal topics. The solution of promoting intercultural communication skills on the general scientific, colloquial, professional levels is multilayered, covering: 

1. pedagogical conditions of learning English legal sublanguage; 2. modern technologies 3. Techniques and methods of teaching foreign languages, 4. Cognitive and professional needs of future lawyers, 5. the positive experience gained in recent years in countries with great methodological traditions.

It is essential to develop the methodological system of forming intercultural and communicative skills in teaching legally-oriented sublanguage based on the principles of the communicative approach, ESP, and intercultural competence. 

Within the ranges of globalization, culture has no boundaries: keeping cultural identity while formulating intercultural communication is a matter of challenge. Intercultural communication covers interpersonal as well as intercultural cooperation while exchanging information, professional experience, and knowledge. The world society is developing on the background of expanding cultural interconnection and interaction of numerous countries and their peoples. This process covers almost all the areas of the social life of the nations. In education, teaching intercultural communication in University ESP programs may lead to the development of intercultural competencies providing solid background of having academic dialogues and interaction among the professionals in the fields. For Law school students, teaching culture-based legal English includes but is not limited to studying the history of native-speaking lawyers' professional area, the customs and stereotypes, legal English terms and concepts, etc.  

Professional legal English dialogues, authentic legal texts based on legal English subculture as well as culture-bound or culture-specific legal vocabulary are part of legal English classes. In legal English studies, both Armenian and English legal language peculiarities are considered on the background of common and legal culture to boost professional, interpersonal and cultural communication among native and nonnative lawyers and law school students. The students enrich their background knowledge of law based on cultural understanding of legal issues discussed in their ESP classrooms. 

In addition, the teaching style, teaching aids, and students' genuine motivation to improve legal English should be targeted and analyzed within an ESP academic environment.

Teaching juridical sublanguage of English through reading professionally-oriented texts represents the main content, cultural background, and functional characteristics of juridical texts and discourses. Creolized texts and virtual discourses are used as original material. Finally, the principles of the selection and teaching of legal original texts, the students' individual characteristics, and teaching conditions should be considered.

Reading detective fiction can contribute to the formation and development of the students' background knowledge of the law as detective fiction is abundant with legal terms, native speech patterns, collocations, etc. Moreover, the students enjoy reading detective fiction. It also helps them overcome national, cultural, legal, and psychological stereotypes. Studying different sub-genres of detective fiction enlarges students' scope of knowledge, forming professional reading culture. The students learn to recognize legal and non-legal literature non-equivalent vocabulary, search for the appropriate information via the Internet (having a list of stories of different genres), and compare English and Armenian legal realities. The responsibility of reading lies with the students being viewed as an independent activity.

ESP methods are designed to meet adult learners’ goals to reach a workable level of English proficiency. For ESP learners, oral and written communication in the field of study is a priority and a realistic opportunity to meet the job market requirements. Communicative language teaching really works in the ESP classroom. Real-life situations are presented in class, and the students communicate with each other. They work both individually and in a group. They learn to express their opinion, to express ideas that contradict other students’ ideas being able to substantiate their position. The task-based method is also a student-centred one focusing basically on authentic materials and language. The students communicate with each other to solve problems and perform tasks. In Legal English teaching, the conceptual approach is highlighted, assisting the students in communicating in legal semantic fields in cultural settings. Culture is viewed on two levels: common culture and legal culture. Legal knowledge is obtained on the basis of cultural understanding of legal concepts, which enables the students to develop academic dialogue and interaction with native speaking law students and lawyers. The content-based method meets the learners’ needs as it focuses on both the academic subject and language. Since academic subjects and English language skills are taught simultaneously, the learners develop both comprehension and communication skills participating actively in group discussions, dialogues, moot courts, etc. The scientific experiment was conducted in ESP homogeneous groups of 112 1st year students. The experiment included diagnosis, observation, data collection, and data analysis. To check the students’ intercultural competencies common and legal cultural awareness, a questionnaire was developed. The students’ answers to the questions were collected and studied. The students were divided into two groups: experimental and control. The experimental group was taught legal concepts, terms, collocations, and lacuna in authentic texts, detective stories, culture-specific readings, and films. The control group covered only the materials of their textbooks. Then both groups were given tests. The experimental group excelled the control group.

The results showed that the experimental group excelled the control one, recording 24% progress, in contrast to the latter’s 14%. The comparison of overall results was implemented by Microsoft Excell, 2010. The main results of the study were discussed at the joint session of the chairs of Pedagogy, English Philology, and ESP in YSU. The study was implemented through the pilot training at the Law Departments of YSU and RAU. The experiment confirmed that the applied materials, teaching strategies, and communicative methods might be a better way to teach legal English while developing intercultural and communicative competencies, as well as raising common and legal culture awareness, thus confirming the overall idea of the hypothesis: “ Holistic approach to the development of intercultural communicative competences in teaching legal English in the University would result in the establishment of progressive and updated methodological system beneficial for today’s law school students”. Thus, the conducted research studied and systematized the fundamental theories, concepts, and approaches for teaching legal English in the process of developing intercultural competence; clarified the purpose and objectives of teaching legally-oriented sublanguage focusing on colloquial, general scientific, and professional vocabulary as well as developed the model of forming intercultural communication skills as the basis of the proposed methodological system. The system of tasks and exercises on authentic texts (discourse), simulation of authentic situations, criteria of assessing students’ intercultural communicative skills in occupational settings were considered and developed. Тhe developed methodological system can contribute to successful teaching of legal English, effectively applying current textbooks and study materials circulating at Law Departments. Moreover, it raised the urgency of drafting and creating new textbooks and teaching kits, as well as designing and implementing new culture-specific legal English courses.

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