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A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION BETWEEN 1997 AND 2018

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2019

Xian Zhang*
Affiliation:
University of North Texas
*
*Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Xian Zhang, University of North Texas, UNT Discovery Park, 3940 North Elm, Suite B201, Denton, TX 76203-5017. E-mail: xian.zhang@unt.edu

Abstract

This study used the bibliometric method to examine the field of second language acquisition (SLA) between 1997 and 2018 to provide a systematic overview of the field and to discover major trends in SLA. Based on citation/cocitation information and keywords retrieved from Web of Science, this study performed three types of bibliometric analyses to identify the prominent scholarly documents, authors, research institutions, geographic regions, and research topics that have been highly influential in the field of SLA over the last two decades. The scientific network maps and the keyword analysis revealed a number of significant changes as well as new trends in the field.

Type
State of the Scholarship
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

Xian Zhang is an assistant professor in applied linguistics at the department of linguistics, University of North Texas. His research interests primarily lie on second language acquisition, sociocultural theory, cognition, corpus linguistics, and language assessment.

This study is supported by the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities in P. R. China (Project No. 17JJD740004) and the National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

References

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