A Visualized Analysis Of Studies On Language Transfer In FL Learning

Language transfer is an active discipline during the history of foreign language learningstudies. This study takes language transfer as research topic, applies bibliometric approach todiscuss the disciplinary structure and hot topics of language transfer research in foreign language.Data are collected from the top20journals of foreign language learning in SSCI database of Webof Science from1998to2011, altogether298articles with1026key words are gathered andanalyzed using an integrated knowledge mapping framework that includes selected techniquessuch as key word co-occurrence analysis, cluster analysis and co-citation analysis. The softwaremainly used in this study is CiteSpace created by Chaomei, Chen.The present study was designed to investigate the following questions by using thebibliometric approach:(1)What is the current research status on language transfer in foreignlanguage learning？(2)What are the key issues and hot topics of language transfer in foreignlanguage learning?(3)What are the trends in development of language transfer in foreignlanguage learning?This study indicates that the publication of research papers about language transfer inforeign language learning remains a stable annual growth, so do the citations each year. As forthe authorship, there are16authors who published three papers and above about languagetransfer in foreign language learning, among which, Wang Min, Nicoladis Elena, Chen Xi andSiegel Linda S published more than ten articles respectively in this field during this14-yearperiod，so they can be regarded as the core writers in this aspect. Concerning the contribution ofcertain countries and institutions, USA published129articles in language transfer among the total298articles, taking up43.289%of all the data. These researches are mainly done in MarylandUniversity, Illinois University and other education institutions. As for major source journals ofpublication in this aspect, Second Language, Research Journal of Educational Psychology andLanguage Learning are the top three journals in this field, and the most cited journal is LanguageLearning.The study also indicates that phonological awareness, children, learners and skills are thecore nodes in the key words co-occurrence net work, which indicates that these words are the hotissues in this field. The three hot topics of language transfer are mainly individual differencesand language transfer, transfer in semantic development and transfer in second languageprocessing.The study of individual differences in SLA has received considerable attention over theyears and has shown that there are a number of dimensions of learner differences which are generally acknowledged to affect the way they learn foreign languages, including age, aptitude,intelligence, motivation, learning style and personality. Much SLA research focused on targetlanguage proficiency in terms of grammatical accuracy, native-like pronunciation, andunexamined target language cultural norms. There is clearly a need for more research onrelationships among attitudes and motivation, and pragmatic development.The researches on transfer in semantic development are mainly about two questions: Firstly,do adult learners develop a new semantic system while learning a second language? Second,whether or to what extent can adult learners eventually develop a new semantic or conceptualsystem? However, few researches can give an answer to the above two questions. One reason isthat it is hard to measure the extent adult learners develop a new semantic system. Anotherreason is that misuse of vocabularies has poor reproducibility. The same mistakes may nothappen the next time.Language processing mainly refers to speech perception, word recognition, sentenceprocessing and speech production. Researches on speech perception are mainly psycholinguisticmodels such as the SLM by Fledge and colleagues, the PAM by Best and colleagues (Flege,1995; Guion,2000; Best,2001), the Feature Model of L2Perception by Larson-Hall and theNative Language Magnet Model by Kuhn; As for researches on word recognition, how bilingualassess words in two languages and how word meanings become activated in bilingual memoryhave made considerable progress both in terms of empirical studies and theoretical models.Some of the most important tendencies seen in this research are transfer in verb argumentstructure, the development of transfer theory and the relationships between language transfer andother mental processes in language learning.This study provides a quantitative overview of language transfer research and offers avisualized insight into the language transfer research in terms of the current status, key issues,and development trends. It is hoped that the findings of this study can offer a scientific referenceto language transfer research and foreign language teaching and learning, which will be valuableto students entering the field of second language acquisition, researchers, language teachers andanyone interested in the research of language transfer in foreign language learning.