Photo of Nigel John Musk

Nigel John Musk

Senior Associate Professor

Language learning, multilingualism and language practices

I am interested in how we learn language(s) and how we use our languages in social contexts both in everyday situations and in school settings. In order to understand and interpret our language practices and language learning practices I also pay attention to how language is entwined and co-ordinated with other resources we have at our disposal, e.g. how we move our bodies, where we look and what objects we make use of.

In my teaching, I have courses for example on interaction in the second language classroom, varieties of English (Englishes) throughout the world and the history of the English language from Old English through to the modern day.

Research interests

My main research interests concern language teaching and learning as well as bilingualism/multilingualism. What these research areas share is a conversation analytic and interaction analytic perspective, but also an educational setting.

Research projects

My ongoing research project “Making revisions in digital collaborative writing” (2018-2020) is funded by the Swedish Science Council (Committee for Educational Sciences). The project aims to give a detailed but also holistic picture of how and to what extent upper secondary pupils revise their texts when they write collaboratively in English and use digital tools, such as traditional word processors (e.g. Word) or web-based apps (e.g. Google Docs).

My current research project is about secondary school pupils’ revisions in their digital collaborative writing in English as a second language. Photo credit Foto: Nigel Musk

The project’s contribution to the field concerns the need to (1) carry out more basic research on the affordances and limitations of the revision processes while writing collaboratively in a foreign language, (2) develop more finely tuned research methods and tools to shed light on the relationship between the process and product, and (3) make pedagogical recommendations that are grounded in students’ successful revision practices.

Some results are presented in “Using multimodal Conversation Analysis to examine the epistemic ecology of computer-assisted collaborative writing” from the project on upper secondary school pupils’ revisions in digital collaborative writing in the English language classroom.

Video

 

I have previously collaborated in a research project (2008-2012) on learning and remembering which went by the name of LINT, ”Learning, Interaction and Narrative Knowing and Remembering”, a collaborative endeavour between four Swedish universities (Linköping, Gothenburg, Stockholm and Uppsala). The project was funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Bank of Sweden’s Tercentenary Fund and the Swedish Research Council. Linköping’s contribution to the project focused on how digital tools are used in the English second language classroom to promote learning.

My doctoral thesis was about young people’s bilingualism in a bilingual secondary school in Wales entitled Performing Bilingualism in Wales with the Spotlight on Welsh: A Study of the Language Practices of Young People in Bilingual Education. Since defending my thesis, my interest in codeswitching among Welsh-speaking young people has remained and I have continued to write about the language practices of this specific group as well as about codeswitching or language alternation in general.

Publications

2022

Nigel John Musk (2022) Using online translation tools in computer-assisted collaborative EFL writing Classroom Discourse, Vol. 13, p. 119-144 Continue to DOI

2021

Nigel John Musk (2021) "How do you spell that?": doing spelling in computer-assisted collaborative writing Classroom-based conversation analytic research: theoretical and applied perspectives on pedagogy, p. 103-131 Continue to DOI

2020

Mathias Broth, Nigel John Musk, Rasmus Persson (2020) Inspelning och analys av interaktionsdata Multimodal interaktionsanalys, p. 41-74
Nigel John Musk (2020) Att lära sig ett annat språk i samspel med andra: ämnesområde: språkinlärning Multimodal interaktionsanalys, p. 339-358

2019

Kirsten Stoewer, Nigel John Musk (2019) Impromptu vocabulary work in English mother tongue instruction Classroom Discourse, Vol. 10, p. 123-150 Continue to DOI

Activities

Networks

The Research Environment for Language and Culture
SIS (Conversation and Interaction Seminars)
ASLA (The Swedish Association of Applied Linguistics)
• LEG (Language and Ethnography Group) co-ordinated by the Centre for Research on Bilingualism at Stockholm University

Teaching

• Varieties of English
The History of English
Interaction Analysis
Advanced Linguistic Theory and Method
Academic Writing
• Thesis supervision in English linguistics

Responsibilities

  • Course tutor for English 3 and the English Magister (Master’s year 1)
  • Joint responsibility (with Lars Liljegren) for the subject English in the Secondary School Teachers’ Programme. Course tutor for the specialisation course (term 3) and advanced level (term 4) as well as co-ordinator for theses within the subject English.

Research Environment

Organisation