A Decade of Research on the Development Ofcommunicative Competence in English Language Teaching: a Bibliometric Analysis

The development of communicative competence is an important and rapidly growing area of research in contemporary English language teaching. This study aims to identify, through bibliometric analysis, the developmental trends and major thematic directions of research on communicative competence published between 2015 and 2025. A total of 132 publications indexed in the Scopus database were analyzed. The analysis examined annual publication trends, document types, author and institutional productivity, and thematic relationships among keywords. The findings indicate an overall increase in research activity, with the highest annual publication output recorded in 2025. The distribution of publications by authors and institutions suggests that research in this field is not concentrated around a single scholar or academic center. Keyword analysis revealed that research on communicative competence spans several interconnected areas, including foreign language teaching, the communicative approach, intercultural communication, pragmatic competence, motivation, and digital learning. Overall, the findings show that communicative competence has developed into an increasingly multidisciplinary area of research in contemporary language education.

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