Research Trends of Written Corrective Feedback in L2 Writing: A Bibliometric Analysis

Written corrective feedback in Second Language Writing is one of the most important parts in L2 Acquisition and Language Teaching. CiteSpace is a convenient and effective bibliometric analysis tool which is widely used by researchers to explore the development tends of a certain field. The Web of Science core collection database was used as the primary source for data collection. There were 272 effective articles were selected from 2001 to 2021. The hot research topics in recent 20 years and emerging trends were showed. It was found that the research of written corrective feedback has entered a period of rapid development after the accumulation of basic knowledge in the early stage. Many empirical studies have been carried out. The distribution, cooperation, development trends and hotpots of current research are presented through visual map analysis in this study. In the future, the written corrective feedback research could try to concentrate on the psychological process and feedback providers, and it is also suggested to combine interdisciplinary knowledge such as education, psychology, neurology, etc., and use new research and measurement methods to promote the development of written corrective feedback.