One of the major challenges for any L2 teacher is to integrate vocabulary components into a course. Determining what words to select in order to satisfy the goals of the course and what instructional methodology best suits the purpose of vocabulary learning are not easy tasks. Even more difficult is dealing with the formulaic terminology of a domain-specific vocabulary that students have not previously encountered. In this paper, I describe a criminalistics module within a Legal Spanish course that has a mock trial as a final assignment. In order to learn the terminology for the final assignment, incidental vocabulary learning through reading, watching a movie, and listening to a talk was seen as complementary, but not sufficient. Instead, intentional vocabulary learning has proven more effective because it reinforces retention of novel vocabulary and leads to its eventual production in the final task.

There is growing interest in including service-learning courses in higher education, and abundant literature exists on this subject. Less researched is binomial service learning, specifically related to civic learning and legal translation. Studies on the goals of combining foreign language instruction with civic participation in the Hispanic community through translation have revealed very positive outcomes. This paper presents two different community-related translation activities in a Spanish course for specific purposes (specifically, Legal Spanish), and the corresponding students’ reflections. One is related to El Salvador and to asylum and refugee claims in the US, while the other is linked to a Health Center in Trenton, NJ. The conclusion summarizes the results and evaluates their significance in the context of community-learning service and their success in bringing students closer to a reality that is far beyond their context, while critically thinking about justice-related issues.