About The NoVa Gujarati Language Study Group

This group meets on the second Wednesday of every month.

The general strategy is to get our reading and writing skills up to speed so that we can start reading different levels of Gujarati and therefore increase our vocabularies. This will allow us to learn more Gujarati without requiring the assistance of a teacher - grassroots learning - teaching ourselves.

This group was developed out of concern for the fact that many of the children of Indian immigrants do not know their parents' tongue well enough to pass it on to their children. Studying the language from a reading/writing perspective will help us to form a much stronger base in Gujarati than a conversational group, for example, and hopefully allow us to pass the language on to our children at a more in-depth level than common spoken sentences.

Normally when practicing/learning a language, it is necessary to be exposed to the language frequently. However, it is not practical for this group to meet weekly or bi-weekly. Therefore, every meeting will also involve the assignment of individualized homework assignments so the studying can continue between sessions.

A variety of materials will be brought to each session by the organizer and participants are encouraged to bring any materials they wish as well. Cookbooks are great for starter reading because they are written mostly in conversational Gujarati. The children's stories are the next level - they will have a few more words that are new vocabulary. Newspapers can be used as reading material as well.