Mapping global research trend related to language teaching A scientometric review

Although language teaching has been attracting scholarly attention in the academia, most research synthesises are qualitative in nature, which entails the quantitative counterpart to complement the validity of the findings. Therefore, to facilitate our understanding of the intellectual landscape of the research in language teaching, based on 1495 research articles published in the journals indexed by SSCI (Social Science Citation Index) between 2000 and 2020, the present study analysed the research trend via the scientometric study software CiteSpace. The findings display that the number of publications in this field witnessed a rapid increase since 2008, which was led by the USA, the UK, and People’s Republic of China. The bursts analysis and cluster analysis exhibited three primary research trends in the past 20 years: (1) the transfer of attention from classroom education to computer-assisted language learning; (2) the reorientation from general English education to ESP (English for Specific Purposes) education; and (3) the change of concentration from teacher (e.g., teacher training and pedagogy) to learner (e.g., individual differences and collaborative learning). Other valuable results and implications were discussed as well, such as the lack of cross-country collaboration. These results perfect the existent research synthesis from a quantitative perspective.

The biggest contribution for a scientometric analysis and other 'big data' research is to provide us with a comprehensive and descriptive result, which means that you do not necessarily need my interpretation (and any other's interpretation)! Also, I would like to point out that, although some 'trends' were identified (e.g., the reorientation from teacher-related research to learner-related research), it is not to say that the new focus is 'better' than the old one. It is only the description of the phenomenon that 'studies are investigating one certain topic more than the other in a specific period of time'.