Research
- Done doctoral research in the area of materials evaluation in English Language Teaching. The research involved developing a framework for the appraisal and selection of materials for undergraduate General English courses.
- Carried out a UGC-funded Minor Research Project (‘General English Course Materials for Low Achievers’) which involved ascertaining the difficulties in English of low achievers among undergraduates, producing materials appropriate to that group, trialling them, and theorizing from the experiment about the kind of materials and methodology that can work with low achievers.
- Headed a 2-year Zee-Education-funded materials production project on which an innovative supplementary reading programme called Champion Reading was produced. The project, a detailed account of which is given in one of my papers on the reading programme (published in the international journal, English Teaching Professional, 62/2, May 2009), involved extensive research.
- Carried out, in response to growing concern at Andhra Loyola College about a large number of undergraduate students failing the General English examination, an action research project which involved developing a variety of materials and trialling them with different groups of low achievers in English. Activity-based, the materials promoted an interactive methodology and offered the students adequate practice in the use of real-world English. This longitudinal well-documented experiment produced satisfactory results both in terms of examination results and in terms of the students’ actual proficiency in English.
- Done two other action research projects: (a) on peer feedback in ESL writing (see IATEFL Voices (Issue 233, July-August 2013) and FORTELL, Issue 29 (July 2014) at Andhra Loyola College; and (b) peer mentoring and peer feedback in L2 writing at SR Gudlavalleru Engineering College.
- Promoted, both as the Director of the Loyola ELT Centre and as the Director of the GEC ELT Centre, action research as a viable means of ongoing teacher professional development. Under my guidance, 25 action research projects have been conucted in five States in this country.
- Research supervisor and research examiner in a few Indian universities.
- Supervised and directed surveys carried out by my students. Guided a number of projects undertaken by undergraduate students as part of their course requirements.
- Review Board Member of four international journals, Higher Education Teaching and Learning Review, The Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Current Issues in Education, European Journal of Applied Social Sciences Research, and Steward Social Sciences and Humanities Review.