Characteristics and Trends of English Testing Research in China: Visual Analysis Based on CiteSpace

Abstract

This thesis aims to have a visualized analysis of English testing from 1995 to 2020 in China with the help of the Scientometric software CiteSpace by drawing a map of keyword co-occurrence, time zone, and author cooperation network as well as scientific research institution cooperation network. It found that the cooperation between the authors is not strong and so do the research institutions. Besides, research focus detected mainly include college English, formative assessment, assessment, college English teaching, summative assessment and language testing. And according to the map of time zone, this research field is constantly moving towards enrichment and refinement. Finally, based on the mapping knowledge domains drawn by CiteSpace, the future development trends and deficiencies of this research are summarized.