30 Years of development of English teaching materials: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract In recent years, the influence of the development of English teaching materials has attracted the wide attention of international scholars, and a large number of related topic literature has grown exponentially. However, more comprehensive science mapping is needed in this field. This article reviews the development of English teaching materials over 30 years using bibliometric analysis. We extracted the raw data from the Web of Science Core Collection. Specifically, the study examined the following bibliometric indexes: annual scientific production, sources, average citations, authors and affiliations and countries, keywords, research trends, and conceptual structure. Overall, it was found that the research productivity and citations in the field have been increasing during the inclusive years. China, the United States, and the United Kingdom are the top three corresponding authors’ countries. As for the affiliations, the most productive university is Islamic Azad University in Iran. It was also discovered that the most frequent words are English and language, and the trending topics are L2 and English as a foreign language textbooks. Conceptual structure and future directions are also discussed here.