RESEARCH

• Research Assistant at Deccan College (1967-1970)
  A Contrastive Study of Marathi Language spoken in Maharashtra (in the west of India) and Bengali language spoken in West Bengal (in the east of India) at Deccan College, Pune, India. Both these languages belong Indo aryan languages but they have very different grammars.
  

• Research Officer  at CIIL Mysore (1970-1973)
  A Descriptive Study of Tripuri or (Kok Borok), a tribal Language Spoken in Tripura. It involved fieldwork and preparation of a Phonetic Reader and Grammar book called KOK BOROK. This was done at the Central Institute Of Indian Languages, Mysore. The Institute was under the ministry of Human Resource Development and had a program to study tribal Languages. The aim of this study was to introduce local language at the primary level and then to gradually shift them to the state language which was the language of education. The purpose was to bring the tribal student population to the mainstream of the national educational system.
  

• Language Consultant at Language Development Project, BMC (1980 - 89)
  • Worked on problems of teaching in primary schools where the populace was mainly from the local slums in Bombay.
  • Studied the language of the fishing community residing along the coast of Mumbai with a view to understand the reason for dropout from schools after reaching the upper primary level. My study showed that significant difference in their dialect from the standard variety was one of the reasons of this drop out. This study was published as a monograph by Bombay Municipal Corporation.
  • Completed a linguistic study of a nomadic tribe called Kunchi Kodava. The people of this tribe have settled in Mumbai and send their children to Marathi medium schools run by Bombay Municipal Corporation. It gives them opportunity to get government jobs in Maharashtra. The language is called Kunchi Kurvey by its speakers. It is very different from Marathi. Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language and Kunchi Kurvey is mixture of several Dravidian language like old Tamil,Telugu, Tulu,Sanketi etc. The nomadic tribe has picked up and added words to their language as they travelled through different part South India, enriching their language as they moved for centuries. It was suggested to the teachers that they follow the second language teaching methodology to teach Marathi to the children.
  • Prepared  a three tier Marathi language Teaching program for non-Marathi speaking people.
• Research Consultant (1985 – 1994)
  • Worked with Ali Yavar Jung Institute of Hearing Impaired and was part of the team that prepared several tests for early detection of the deaf in Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati. It is being used by people working in field.
  • Worked on a research program which collected pan-Indian features found among all the national languages in an effort to define common signs for all Indian languages.
  • Prepared a list of basic vocabulary of people between 18 and 22 for Yashwant Rao Chavan Open University of Maharashtra.

 

TEACHING

• Visiting Lecturer in Linguistics at Bombay University (1981-1990)
• Teaching Consultant (1985 – 1994)
  Worked with Ali Yavar Jung Institute of Hearing Impaired and prepared several tests for early detection of deaf in Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati. It is being used by people working in field. While at S.N.D.T.Women’s University
• Head of Department for Applied Linguistics at SNDT (1990-2005)
  
  • Taught the students of Applied Linguistics the Principles of Phonology and Morphology.
  • Taught Applied Linguistics and its application in Education as one of the courses for M.Ed students 
  • Taught Language Teaching Methodology to B.Ed Students 
  • Taught Basic Theory and Practice of Applied Linguistics B.Ed. special students 
  • Also taught at the B.Ed. in a few colleges of Mumbai Univ.in Mumbai. Lessons involved how to integrate grammar into language teaching programs and how to develop the spoken language.
  • Broad range of projects were taken up by the Dept.in both the theoretical and practical aspects of Applied Linguistics in Education,Translation and Lexicography.
  • Organized workshops for teachers from all over Mumbai on topics of language teaching at different levels. These were widely appreciated, specially because they taught skill based teaching of new books that were introduced for teaching of English as a second language at the upper primary level.
  • Held several national level seminars on different aspects of Applied Linguistics like teaching of English for specific purposes, large class language teaching, gender studies and women writers, translation, language and Power Relations, etc. Some of the proceedings were published by CIIL and are available online.
  • Taught Hindi to students from Canada who came to the University under Common Wealth exchange program. They needed to learn Hindi to do field work with non English speaking populace of India. Developed and taught special purpose courses in Hindi and English.
  • Developed and taught a Marathi course for Nursing students to help them communicate with the local patients who spoke only Marathi. The course is based only on Hospital repertoire. 
  • Also developed English courses  for Vernacular students now studying through English medium. These were for students of Pharmacy, Food Technology, Fashion and Apparel designing, Interior Decoration, Secretarial Practices.
• Visiting lecturer at SNDT University (2005-2013)
  Continued to teach Applied Linguistics courses for post graduate students
• Visiting Position at University of  Zagreb (Summer of  1997 and 2008)
  Taught a reading course in Bengali to the students in Zagreb
  Taught an intensive Course in Spoken Hindi at the Dept. of Indology at Zagreb University