A Bibliometric Analysis on the Published Papers in Journal of Technology Enhanced Foreign Language Education (TEFLE) from Year 2006 to 2015

Abstract

This Paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the papers published in the journal of Technology Enhanced Foreign Language Education (TEFLE), a core professional academic journal in China, during the years from 2006 to 2015. Our result aims to provide a clear view of the evolution of literature in the research field of technology enhanced foreign language learning over the past decade, intending to put forward a preliminary framework for TEFLE to improve its publication quality and at the same time foster better technology enhanced foreign language education in China. Bibliometric indicators of paper amount, author information, total citations, and frequency of keywords have been analyzed with the use of tools of BICOMB and SPSS and methods of co-word and cluster analysis, which indicates that, over the past decade, both of the quality of the published papers and the paper evaluation system has been improved. The statistics also reveal that the authors in TEFLE are mainly from eastern China, a research group that has been formed with more researchers constantly joining in, and a number of papers have been highly cited, bringing further interest in the related disciplines. Currently, the reform of foreign language classroom teaching with technological aids appears the hotspot topic in the related applied field. An effort is made to demonstrate that the research method has shifted to a new way that places equal emphasis on both quantitative and qualitative study in technology enhanced learning (TEL) and technologies have a bigger influence on foreign language learning in China, but in the meantime, there is an imbalance in the distribution of authors from different national geographic areas in TEL research.