Good day, Dr. Anil Kumar D. I'm Arjun. I've had a look through your background and your professional record. I'm interested in hearing more about your work and how you see yourself fitting in here with our faculty. Ready to start?

Yes, I'm ready to start.

Please start by introducing your professional journey in academia.

Uh, hello, I am uh, Doctor Anil Kumar. Uh, I holds a PhD from IIT Madras and my specialization is in, in ELT and uh, applied linguistics. Uh, my research journey has started in IIT Madras with an experimental study where I had displayed a focus on how to manage the theoretical underpinnings in ELT into classroom practice. And I did an experimental study on using task based instruction to improve. Semi urban students, particularly in engineering domain.

How to develop their vocabulary knowledge using TBI as a pedagogical approach? And apart from that, I'm also have 13 years of teaching experience where I have been involved in several academic related and curriculum development activities as a part of the head of the department roles and responsibilities. And I also works as Associate training and Placement officer for a couple of months where I displayed my leadership qualities in arranging. Students and making them to fit for campus placements.

Uh, by dealing with verbal sessions, soft skills training and communication parts. Uh, along with that, I also, uh, was, uh, the alumni relations officer and also currently, uh, heading the, uh, heading as the faculty coordinator of Toastmasters International. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Professor Anil Kumar D. Based on your impressive credentials, I see you’ve pursued a PhD at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and have extensive experience in academic writing, publishing, and teaching. Let's begin the evaluation. Can you provide a brief overview of how your background and skills align with the responsibilities described for this English Professor role?

Yeah, as a researcher from IIT Madras, my insights were deep into the ELT curriculum and as a part of my regular research work, I have used my experimental study as a value based teaching technique when compared to the PPP model which is not working right now as it really wanted to be so. My research totally is depending on how by applying this TBI can be used for the students.

To enhance their vocabulary development both in the receptive level and in the productive level. And at VIT, I would definitely want to see myself to integrating my teaching quality with the vast experience. I have 13 years and the research ability is what I have gained in terms of doing my research experimentally in the classroom environment by incorporating QBI as a model to test and my results were really tangible.

And they approved that this model will definitely encourage and help students in terms of developing their vocabulary, strength and lexical competence, as well as this in turn will help them to develop their academics as well as perform well in their communication competence levels.

Thank you, Professor. That is indeed fascinating—you’ve outlined how your research and teaching model emphasize vocabulary development and lexical competence, which are critical for English learners. I would like to delve deeper into your teaching philosophies. How would you adapt your Task-Based Instruction (TBI) model to cater to diverse student backgrounds in a classroom, particularly those with varying levels of English language proficiency?

Yeah, my research is totally grounded in terms of using the task based instruction as a very model approach in order to use tasks as the tool for language learning. By using this TBI for a vast, diverse, you know, group of people in a class, these tasks will help people because this task based instruction model which I have applied during my PhD research. Is divided into 3 different layers. 1 is pre-task stage, during task stage and post. Task stage. So during that, uh, three task stages, uh, it will allow the students to lessen their cognitive load, uh, and it encourages them to be communicating with their peers in terms of being actively involved in the tasks which were assigned to them. And with the prior knowledge at the during task stage, they will definitely, uh, you know, feels very confident in terms of taking the real time tasks in the task duration cycle and at the, at the end, the post-task stage. Where it all depends on reviewing and evaluating the students performances. So this is an incredibly modern approach which we can apply for diverse environment, diverse, you know, set of people with different proficiencies because it will help not just for rote memorizing the vocabulary, which is indeed important for the academic success. It in turn will help them to be communicative and then develop the language. And at the end there will be. Very confident to use the language rather than just learning.

Receptively, they can use it productively also. So for varying proficiency students, we can divide the tasks into different levels in terms of their difficulties and group those people so that that will be encouraging for them to be a part of their own group where this TPI will also helps that communicative competence improvement for any proficiency level students.

Understood, Professor. Your structured, three-phase Task-Based Instruction (TBI) approach, designed to gradually build confidence and address diverse proficiency levels, is commendable. Adjusting task difficulty and fostering peer collaboration certainly aligns with progressive teaching practices. A follow-up question: How do you address potential challenges, such as student disengagement or resistance, when implementing this model in a classroom environment?

Yeah, When we use this kind of model, generally there won't be any disengagement from the student community. If at all there is certain group of people who are disengaged, then I will use gamification as a tool and also some real world situations. For example, I'll group of the people into different groups and ask them to build a presentation about the failure model which they need to give in the boardroom meeting. So I will group of the. Of different, you know, categories and provision levels. So that's how by gamification and giving the real world scenario situations, I will try them to engage rather than be disengaged throughout the task related activity during the classroom. And that will also help, you know, overall period of time to scaffold themselves rather than depending on the teacher, because task based instruction is is completely depending on the student centric approach.

Not the teacher LED approach.

Thank you, Professor. Incorporating gamification and real-world scenarios, like crafting boardroom presentations, is a strategic way to re-engage students while fostering collaboration and autonomy. Your emphasis on student-centric learning through scaffolding rather than teacher dependency is indeed effective. Let us shift to your expertise in Digital Humanities. Can you explain how this field intersects with traditional areas like English Literature, and what innovations you would bring to its teaching methodology?

So by and large, if you look at the perspective of using the TBI in the digital humanities, now I'm very curious in terms of integrating this TBI approach into AI. As I said, vocabulary learning or language learning, which can also be used for literature. So integrating technology with this proven approach tested at my research level at IIT Madras will definitely integrate with the technology as well as.

Uh, on a helpful for improving the digital humanities, uh, part.

Understood, Professor. Merging your Task-Based Instruction approach with AI for enhancing language and literature learning certainly bridges technology and traditional methodologies effectively. Using innovative tools for vocabulary acquisition and literary analysis could redefine the teaching of Digital Humanities. A follow-up: How do you envision leveraging AI tools or platforms to aid students in interpreting complex literary texts or conducting digital archival research in this field?

For that we can definitely build a corpus related to the terminology what is used in different areas, just not for English literature, even for other technical subjects. And by engaging the students using this AI platforms integrated with the terminology what has been used like high frequency words, mid frequency words and low frequency words. And turning them into real-world situations, giving them the real world scenarios in terms of the.

Tasks that will engage them truly and help to develop this subject specific knowledge.

Thank you, Professor. Creating subject-specific corpora and categorizing terms by frequency, while immersing students in real-world scenarios, is indeed an excellent fusion of AI with teaching methodologies. Leveraging this approach could robustly enhance both literary comprehension and interdisciplinary knowledge. Let’s now focus on your proficiency in Commonwealth Literature. Could you share how your teaching methods address the diversity and complexity inherent in this body of literature?

As my research is completely student centric using task based instruction model, I am more and large dealing with the ELT theoretical aspects which are like input, lower hypothesis and communicative competence as well as TPI. I'm not that much particular in using the Commonwealth literature.

Thank you for your candid response, Professor. It's clear that your expertise is deeply rooted in English Language Teaching and communicative methodologies, which are certainly vital contributions to academia. Let's now explore another area relevant to the role. How do you approach the integration of theory and laboratory courses, particularly in relation to innovative teaching practices?

Yeah, uh.

In my academic journey of 13 years of experience as an English, uh, language teacher, we have developed, uh, and, and even published one book, uh, which is a laboratory manual for communicative English, uh, with the title connect commutative English lab manual, where all the sessions right from phonetics and phonology to word stress and sentence rhythm, and using just a minute, all this speaking related activities we have designed in such a way that people.

You can, the students, particularly of diverse proficiency levels, can use them in their laboratory courses and develop, for example, if anybody was weak in their pronunciation, how to reduce their mother tongue, you know, influence. What we did is we can ask them to record their voice and give the peers a tasks where they can analyze what is the problem with the pronunciation and how far the mother tongue, mother tongue is. Influencing, so with that, uh, telling the students and showing them, uh, that will help them to understand, uh, the nuances of and the importance of the pronunciation, which we have, we have been doing in the English language laboratory. And also I would like to integrate the AI in terms of strengthening the language courses, laboratory-related courses in order to give greater and wider platform for the students from various proficiency levels.

To uh, be good in their uh, pronunciation and enhance the abilities of uh, uh, pronouncing uh uh, widely used for our, our reflective mode for the global audiences.

Thank you, Professor. Your experience in developing the "Connect Communicative English Lab Manual" and incorporating student-centered laboratory practices like peer analysis for pronunciation issues is notable. The idea of integrating AI into such courses adds a compelling dimension for equipping students to meet global communication standards. Shifting focus now, how do you assess and evaluate students effectively, ensuring fairness and encouraging improvement, especially within such dynamic, language-centric laboratory courses?

Uh, I definitely wanted to involve, uh, in the assessment, uh, the digital platforms which are available for us, uh, in order to have a fair and, you know, easy process of assessments for the students, performances like a hoot. And I also can use digital tools like Google Classroom, We can use a Quizlet. So these things will help us to assess very fairly without being any bias to one students and not being good to the other students. So those are all digital platforms I wish to use regularly. I've been using that right now. So that would be a game changer. If teaching with or the assessment is used along with the digital platforms, that integration will definitely do wonders. And you know, that will help us to assess people. And I always use since I've I've been using that as an experimental model in my research at IIT Madras, even in the real.

Some scenario also my assessment is purely depending on how the data is actually showing the incremental development or any decrease in their performances in the mid semester also so that we can align with that assessments and we can incorporate those digital platforms for very failed you know the.

Assessment procedures which we can follow for in the regular classrooms.

Thank you, Professor. Your focus on leveraging digital platforms like Kahoot, Google Classroom, and Quizlet for unbiased assessments demonstrates a commitment to transparency and academic growth. Tracking student performance data dynamically through digital tools and aligning mid-semester evaluations for improvement indeed reflects forward-thinking pedagogical practices. Let's now move into discussing your experience guiding student projects and research initiatives. How do you ensure that your guidance fosters both independent inquiry and academic rigor?

I would like to address individual students problems whether it is an academic writing or project documentation because I'm also experienced in handling the academic writing sessions where the academic writing needs to be integrated as part with the expectations of the research community like detecting the plagiarism and using the right words for the right content and explaining because these engineering.

Uh, whom we meet in the daily classrooms, they're all brilliant in the technical aspects, but when it comes to the narration in terms of using the right, uh, words or right sentence structures, uh, that, that is where the problem actually arises. So I directly address them maybe in a group, maybe in a small group or individually and, uh, telling them, uh, where they were actually going wrong, like the synonym traps or paraphrasing traps and, uh, using that also with the help of TBI, I can achieve.

Results, which is really helpful for our student community.

Thank you, Professor. Your tailored approach to addressing individual and group challenges in academic writing, while integrating practices such as plagiarism detection and refining sentence structures, is crucial for fostering scholarly rigor. Supporting engineering students in articulating their technical insights effectively certainly enhances their research contributions. Now let's discuss your record of publishing research in reputed journals. Could you share the significance of your contributions and describe the impact they have had in your academic field?

The I have published so far, uh, hmm, three papers as of now, uh, in uh, Q2 journals Q3 and Q4 and 1 is in the line of getting published maybe in this quarter or next quarter. And all my research is all depends on using and experimenting how the task based instruction is useful in enhancing, not just vocabulary development, also the English language proficiency of the students, particularly with the rural and semi urban backgrounds.

At my current position in my college where I'm currently working as associate professor of English. So my integration is always research oriented. So I take every opportunity in the classroom or every data what I get from the students during the interactions or teaching or giving lectures. And I just wanted to integrate my teaching into a research dimension. And I always believe that classroom is also. A very good environment for research identification.

And the gap identifications and the problem identifications so that we can implement using a certain pedagogical, you know, value based, outcome based informative systems so that it can be useful for the students and also useful for me as a teacher LED researcher.

Thank you, Professor. It's clear that your research contributions focus on practical, pedagogical advancements, particularly through Task-Based Instruction for students from diverse backgrounds. Your dedication to transforming classroom interactions into research opportunities reflects your commitment to both academic innovation and student development. Lastly, can you elaborate on your involvement in industry projects or consultancy, if any, and how this experience complements your academic pursuits?

Yes, uh, I am not, uh, exactly involved in consultancy related, but as a associate training and placement officer, my role is to train students for various campus recruitments procedures and train them in verbal, train them in behavioral aspects, train them in soft skills, and also train them to improve their communication part such as how to be. Proactive in Group discussions. How to deal with just a minute sessions?

And how to prepare the SOP's statement of purpose and how to ready for the interview. So I used to do this a lot rather than directly involving myself into any industry related projects and. The other aspects like.

My contribution as a consultant in that particular areas.

Thank you, Professor. Your role as an Associate Training and Placement Officer underscores your commitment to student readiness for professional challenges, particularly in enhancing their verbal, behavioral, and communication skills. While not directly linked to industry consultancy, these efforts significantly contribute to student outcomes and employability. This brings us to the end of this evaluation segment. Is there anything specific you'd like to discuss or highlight further before we proceed?

With my PhD at IIT Madras and the research exposure I got at at the IIT and my 13 years of teaching experience would definitely align well with the an institute of global reputation like Vit Vellore. So I'm very eager and enthusiastic to be a part of such growing and research-oriented faculty community if if the chances are opportunities offered to me.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing, Professor. Your extensive experience, research-driven approach, and dedication to both pedagogy and student development are indeed commendable. I appreciate your enthusiasm for contributing to a globally reputed institution like VIT Vellore. That concludes today's discussion. Do let me know if you're ready to officially wrap up the interview.

Yes, thank you for the opportunity.