In the latest Android ADT tools, it seems that Google has removed the hardware keyboard support. Here’s how to enable keyboard support in the Android emulator.
Open the config.ini file located in the root folder of your AVD in a text editor. On a Windows machine that would be %USERPROFILE%\.android\avd\<YOUR-AVD-NAME>. For example: c:\users\john\.android\avd\myavd
Add the line
hw.keyboard=yes
and save the file and re-start the AVD , if it’s already running.