BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF PUBLICATIONS ON GERMAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN WOS EXAMPLE

Abstract

In this study, publications on German as a foreign language in the Web of Science (WOS) database were analyzed by bibliometric method. The data obtained allowed to make a general case evaluation in the field of German as a foreign language. Accordingly, it was determined that the articles were prominent among the publications types on the related subject in the WOS database. German and English as the language of publication, America and Germany among the countries of publication, linguistics and educational sciences in terms of research areas, L.M. Kutch as the most productive author draw attention. The year with the highest number of publications is 2015, and the year with the highest number of citations is 2021. In addition, the article with the highest number of citations is G. Kasper's article entitled "Participant orientations in German conversation-for-learning" published in the “Modern Language journal” in 2004. Further, network maps were created by using the VOSviewer program to visualize bibliometric relationships in the study. In the clusters in the first of these maps, it was seen that “German as a foreign language”, “multilingualism”, “foreign language teaching”, “German”, “teaching German as a foreign language” were frequently repeated among the keywords of the publications selected as data. Following this, co-citation network map of the journals was created. Journals with the highest total link strength in the clusters of this map are “Modern Language Journal”, “Language Learning”, “Bilingualism: Language and Cognition”, “Language Testing”, “Foreign Language Annals” and “Deutsch als Fremdsprache”. Finally, it was understood that the authors with the highest total link strength in the clusters included in co-citation network map of authors are R. Ellis, Z. Dornyei, G. Neuner, C. Altmayer, T. Heift, K. Ehlich and N.C. Premawardhena.