Speaking in front of people is challenging even in one’s own language. Since personality and speaking anxiety are interrelated, students’ personality types are important to find out the reasons for their anxiety. The aim of the current study is to determine the personality traits of the participants; to investigate their foreign language speaking anxiety levels; and to find out whether students’ personality traits significantly predict their foreign language speaking anxiety. According to the results, extraversion, openness and conscientiousness significantly and negatively but neuroticism and agreeableness significantly and positively predict foreign language speaking anxiety. The majority have agreeableness which predicts foreign language speaking anxiety positively; this may explain why people cannot speak English in our country.

Foreign language teachers need to motivate their students to learn English. Literature can be a good means to achieve motivation in ELT classes. There has recently been a revival of interest in literature as a practical, motivating and an effective resource available for language learning. Therefore, we can assume that literature and authentic literary materials, especially short stories can enhance motivation of ELT students. Keeping this in mind, this study was carried out in an ELT classroom by using two homogeneous groups: an experimental group and a control group. First, for one semester, Experimental Group was provided with unabridged, authentic short stories, whereas Control Group was exposed to abridged and simplified texts and reading passages. The findings showed that the Experimental Group's overall results of final exams and outcomes were better than that of the Control Group. Second, an attitude survey was used to understand the level of motivation of literature and to determine whether literature has a positive effect on reading and writing. The results suggested that use of short stories enhances learning and may be good motivational means in second and/or foreign language teaching settings through developing integrated reading, speaking, writing and listening skills. The results of this study may be beneficial to language practitioners in their classroom teaching.

Translation is closely related to languages, linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, culture etc. and because of these relations, there are also a lot of theories which give importance either to source language or target language. Linguistic and other features of the source and target texts have been examined for years. But translator is an important element with an important role in translation process as well, and the influence of translators’ personality traits on their translation has been emphasized. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to investigate whether there are relations between translators’ personality characters and their translation strategy preferences. The BFI Test (Big Five-Factor Inventory) is administered to 28 English Translation and Interpreting students at Cappadocia University to determine the personality traits of the participants. Then they are asked to choose one of the suggested translations in accordance with the translation model. The data are analyzed through SPSS (v. 22). The findings indicate that there are significant relationships between personality traits of participants and their use of translation strategies. According to results, agreeableness personality trait has a significant relationship with borrowing strategy, openness and neuroticism have significant relationships with modulation strategy, and conscientiousness has a significant relationship with adaptation strategy. Only extraversion does not correlate significantly with any of the strategies.