The Current Status of Research on English Language Teaching for Deaf Students - A Visual Analysis Based on CiteSpace Software

Abstract

This article is in line with the initiatives of “supporting the disadvantaged” and “developing the cause of persons with disabilities” proposed by UNESCO. With using “deaf students” and “English teaching” as the key research terms, efforts are put into searching research in the Web of Science (WOS) core collection database from the year 2000 to 2020. The index results are sorted by publication years, authors, institutions, sources and keywords. Then these statistics are visualized by CiteSpace software in five aspects, including authors, institutions, journal sources and keywords. In total, there include 4866 articles abroad in this study. The number of articles published at home and abroad show an increasing trend. These collected researches focus on the teaching method, teaching strategy, cognitive condition, sign language teaching, and cochlear implant in English teaching for deaf students. The foreign ones emphasize on ability of deaf students themselves and influence force of auxiliary tool. The overall research on English language teaching for deaf students is on the rise, and the research contents and hot topics international literature are somewhat overlapped while somewhat different. The team cooperation and international exchange should be strengthened while complementing each other, in order to promote the overall development of this field.