Assessing EFL (English as Foreign Language) Education for Sustainable Development: Exploring the Cultural Teaching Literature.

Abstract

Cultural teaching is the underlying core component of English as Foreign Language (EFL) education. Although the previous literature has intensely studied this theme, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of research characteristics and trends in this field is still lacking regarding cultural teaching in EFL education. This study aims to explore the research distribution, research hot topics, and research the trends of EFL cultural teaching by conducting a bibliometric analysis of 358 articles on Web of Science using CiteSpace. The analysis leads to the following three findings: (a) The countries that teach EFL prevail in terms of number of publications but lag behind in terms of research influence, and a global academic community has not taken shape. (b) Interculturality is the central theme, encompassing a range of related topics such as intercultural competence, intercultural communication, and cultural awareness, with key teachers, learners, and textbooks as research perspectives. (c) Multilingual turn has emerged as a prominent new trend, which emphasizes the importance of cultural diversity and pays more attention to source/native languages and cultures. Furthermore, possible measures of promoting interculturality were discussed on the basis of relevant literature studies. In addition, scholars are suggested to pay more academic attention to the research and practices of EFL countries.