This book has been prepared for all such academic staff who may be engaged in teaching in academic programmes in Gujarati, and especially for those currently involved in teaching in 10-months intensive courses in all major Indian languages at our centers. The basic idea is to generate a reader and through that, help our second language learners in their learning/teaching endeavour.

It is a common knowledge that most of what goes in the name of language learning in India today is heavily loaded towards paper and rote learning. Most of these courses are, therefore, an extension of what was earlier done in a very crude manner. The CIIL, however, has spent its collective energy on producing and promoting basic, intermediate and intensive courses in a very careful manner over the last three decades. Even in this age of on-line teaching/learning, there can be no quarrel over the importance of the print media, particularly because

• this is still the most accessible medium in terms of distribution
• it reaches out the maximum number of people whereas the penetration of all other media put together is negligible
• the print medium is still the most cost-beneficial medium of instruction
• it happens to be the only method of teaching that a vast majority of our teaching community is familiar with
• it has the psychological advantage in that the learners take the printed word very seriously the truth value of these words is almost never questioned
• most of our resource materials (grammars, dictionaries, creative writing, style manuals, word-finders or thesauri) usable for the purposes of development of teaching/learning of Indian languages are still paper materials.
The present Intermediate Gujarati Reader is being presented by the Author-Editor as a glimpse of writing styles in various registers of Gujarati - divided into 30-odd lessons. The book covers a wide range of topics so that everyone using the book is benefitted. The materials produced by the Institute have so far been tried out through a series of 10 months Intensive Training Programme currently offered in 7 Centres of the Institute at three levels - Basic, Intermediate and Advanced courses. The present Intermediate Reader is suitable not only for the learners at our Pune Centre, but also for all those who have had basic introduction to Gujarati. I hope the Gujarati Diaspora scattered over many countries and especially in the African nations, would particularly welcome this publication.

The suggestions, comments, criticisms from all those who may use this teaching material will be most welcome. Specific comments on the aspect of production, including typographical and other errors that may have crept in or stylistic changes could be sent to Dr. K.S.Rajyashree . who heads the Publication Unit. Suggestions on teaching and use of these materials could be mailed to the Principal of our Centre in the West at Pune

I am very happy to see that the Intermediate Gujarati Reader in its current incarnation is now ready for use again, and I congratulate the author, Dr. Usha Nair for having produced it so well.