111. Te whakamahere reo (Language planning)

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spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply. Tēnā koutou katoa, e te iwi, e ngai pīkoko ki te reo Māori. Hoki mai ki te ipāho o Everyday Māori, ko Himi Kelly tenei, ko Apera Woodfine tenei, tēnā koe hoa. Tēnā koe, pewe ana. Tino Pajana. A hua, a wangawangana. Hæha, hæha, te tak. Nga, te mere. Koine i te puni whakamutsinga. This is our last episode of the season, at least. Season two.

And we've decided to dedicate this episode to talking about language planning, Te Whaka Mahere Reo, and the importance of language planning. Kāpā e hoa. When you started learning Te Reo Māori e hoa, did you have a plan? As such? Not really. And I kind of wish I did because that would have helped me a lot and sped up my progress. So hopefully we can speak to that a little bit today. And hopefully the listeners can take something away from this to help them along their hiding. Aye.

That was the case for me as well. I didn't have a plan. I just went into it, fell in love with the language, and continued learning. And it was just like a snowball effect in terms of... my growth in the language and my exposure to the language. I was a lot younger too when I started learning, so I don't think a plan was anywhere, you know, in my mind. But...

It does make sense when you think about undertaking something that's really, really big and requires a lot of time and a lot of effort. For other things in our lives, often we do kind of create a plan. That's true, isn't it? Like you're going to go on a diet, you're going to join the gym and get fit. You know, whatever it is, sometimes we create a plan. We may not always write it down, but there'll be some sort of plan maybe in mind. Yeah, yeah, tikka. So here's...

Here's some things we want you to think about if you are learning te reo Māori, continuing your learning of te reo Māori, teaching te reo Māori, or maybe driving the learning of others. whether it be your whanau, workmates, a group, here are some things to think about in terms of language planning. So take the ones that resonate most strongly with you. Koya.

Koia. Let's start with the question, ngā pātai, we want to ask ourselves a lot of questions. If you're jotting this down and you are creating a plan, ask yourself these questions. Kia tīmata ki te pātai, hea hai. Why?

Why am I doing this? Why am I following this journey? What is that reason for you? And for some of us, it's like, well, because I want to speak te reo Maori. And I think, well, let's take a... bit deeper than that and like what is it that's really motivating me to want to learn to speak te reo Māori and this is a question I ask my students in the first class I get them to think about it they don't have to share it

but I get them to think about what is their motivator, like what brought them here, what is it that's motivating them to learn te reo Māori. And every answer, every reason is valid. For some of us, it's Nāte Mehe Māori ahau. Because I'm Māori. Yep. For others, I'm married to a Māori. My tamariki are Māori. My mokopuna are Māori. I work with Māori. And for some people, they're just generally interested and curious and learning more. But I think this is really important.

question to ask ourselves because a lot of us are doing this on top of a lot of other things yeah so we want to know what's the fuel for our fire it's going to keep us going in those harder times yeah Koia, because we've got work commitments, we've got whānau commitments, we've got sports commitments, and then on top of all of that, we've decided we're going to learn te reo Māori, and some of those commitments can take over.

Life takes over and Te Reo is kind of the first thing to get pushed to the wayside. And so what is it in those times that's going to be our reminder, our motivator to keep going? Kia ora. No reira. How high? Why? Why am I doing this? Tua rua, I think, like, who's involved? That's a good party. Ko wai. Ko wai. Ko wai kei te whai i te reo. Gohou. This is me. But who else? Yeah, it's a good part of it because although there are a lot of resources out there for us to make progress on our own...

It's a bit of a lonely journey sometimes, and often it's much easier to learn a language. And this question can include also, who is teaching you? Maybe you have a teacher, so that can be involved in Kōwai. And maybe also you're teaching somebody else. You're passing on your learnings to someone else. That would be involved in this question. Yeah. We're learning here like a language.

And we're learning how to express ourselves in a new language to communicate our needs, our wants, our feelings. And it's a lot more meaningful. when we have other people around us to do that, to practice with. It can be lonely doing it on your own, and it can be hard, and it can take a long time, you know, to do it on your own. So, yeah, going back to what Apera said.

Who is involved? Who's leading me? Who's guiding me? You need a teacher. Who are my friends or whanau that are already on this journey who I can reach out to for some guidance, who I can go to to ask questions every now and then? And then who are the people around me who I can like rope in on the journey as well? Your tamariki, your partner, going back to the group you're working with. Maybe it's, you know, your work friends.

But get people on the waka with you. I'm just going to drop a little hack here. In terms of kowai, the ideal situation is you want to be the worst speaker in the room. That sounds funny, doesn't it? You want to be the worst speaker in the room? Yeah, hi.

Because then everyone else in the room has something to offer you. You're surrounded by people who you can learn from. So powerful with language learning. Learning anything, actually. But that's what I try and attract is speakers who are at a higher level than me. So I can... I can steal that hell. We need to be exposed. We need to be around proficient speakers to have examples of how to say things.

You know, simple things like put the kettle on. You know, if we're not around speakers, we're never going to be exposed to that language. and we're going to be trying to figure it out on our own all the time. It's like tamariki, how we learn is tamariki to speak. Before we speak, we're listening for a good two years, a year and a bit, and then we start to produce all of that stuff we've soaked up.

Just going back to that simple whakatauki proverb that was connected to Te Atarangi Ngoi Pe Whairangi said Te tiro, whakarongo, kōrero Like observe, watch, listen, and then speak. Like so important. And just that last little bit, like who am I teaching? So be the worst speaker in the room, that's such a good takeaway. So much to learn. But so much of my learning has been consolidated through my teaching.

I've learned things, and then as a teacher, it gets to know, like, okay, I'm teaching this structure this week. I go back to my notes, you know, to make sure that I understand it inside and outside. Every aspect of that sentence structure, because I know I'm going to get a hundred questions from my students. So in teaching, I've like really consolidated some of my own learning. That might just be not in a professional capacity. That might just be passing things on to your.

You know, your own. Your own people around you. So that's something you'd recommend? Aye. I think it's a natural progression too with language. We learn and we teach. Ako mai, ako atu.

So we've done the why. We've done the who. How te tuatoru? Ko te when. When. Awhia. Awhia. Hey, important question. Think about how much time you have to commit to learning. Like, if I calculate my spare time, I don't want to do that. But if I did, you know, that's like, okay, it gives me a good gauge of when I'm going to be doing my learning. You know, have you got some spare time in the morning, in the evening? Do you commute? That's a good one. Yep.

I want to be making the most of these little moments. And I really encourage people to make the most of really small moments. There's no time too short to do a little bit of aqua, you know, even if it's two minutes, you know, that's valuable for sure. And we call this micro-learning. Micro-learning, yeah. So little chunks here and there. Rather than this idea of like, okay, I'm going to have to sit down for an hour and a half and do my study. Because in reality...

A lot of us don't have that time. Yeah, it's just not practical for a lot of people. It can be quite tiresome, like sitting down doing study for an hour and a half. I get distracted. For sure, me too. But... With my learning of Portuguese, it's micro-learning. It's like I pick up the app. When I would be sitting down scrolling, I'd be like, okay, jump on the app that I use and just do some learning.

And it's just these little bits over time, these little increments that they do make a difference. Huge difference. So maybe like with that as well, when it's like setting little milestones, like little, you know. Which will eventually lead us to our final destination. Exactly. Fluent. I just want to drop here as well that perhaps we can consider some of the things that we're doing with our time regularly that we might want to do less of.

And swap some of that time for learning time. Just another way to free up a little bit more time. Did the scrolling, did that? The scrolling definitely sparked that thought. Yeah. Hey, like the amount of time. I scroll like meaningless content when I could be doing something better with my time. I respect your honesty. Tēnā koe. Nō reira, kia hoki ano ki ngā pātai nei. Tuatahi, hi. Why? Tua rua, ko waima? Who's involved? Tua toru, whakarohia te wā kei a koe. Awea koe a koe. When am I learning?

Nga, ko te pātai tua whāpea hai mana tu mā tātou. It's like, howa ngā rauemi? What resources am I using? Yeah, and maybe one question to ask ourselves. before getting to this question, is like, what kind of learner am I? That's a good part of it. How do you like to learn? I'm pretty hands-on. I like to do things that are a bit more interactive. That works for me. And I like to learn in small chunks as well. I'm very visual.

I can see things when I learned them like three years ago sometimes. Like sometimes a word will appear and it's like I can see it on the paper. I don't know. I have an amazing mind. Impressive. But like visual, like I can see it in my mind, what I've written down sometimes. Also listening, like audio. So like someone says something.

And that's going back to what you said about having speakers around you or having people who are more proficient than you because they become your exemplars. And I can remember the time I heard a new word or a phrase and go, oh. That's how you say it. Like, I remember sitting down and having kai. There was a group of us with Timoti. Ta Timoti Karetu. And ka taimaitana kai, you know, his kai that he'd ordered come. And he goes, ooh.

which is like, oh, what a big serving, what a big portion. And I was just like, such a simple thing to say, but I... probably wouldn't have said it like that. And so having those examples, and I can remember that time. So I'm a very visual, very audio. Awesome. So this leads to the next question. Knowing that you're like... quite hands-on, what kind of resources are you going to be tapping into to help you in your learning?

Things that I can see and pick up and sort of interact with a bit more. I like flashcards. I've been doing those a lot. I do them mostly digitally. So it's sort of semi-hands-on. Any good at? I use Anki for that, A-N-K-I. There's many good flashcard apps out there. Quizlet? Quizlet, yeah. Same idea. It's like they show you the...

What's it called? Space learning repetition. So they show you the cards at like increasingly longer intervals. And it makes its way into your long-term memory by doing that. And also like on a lot of those platforms like Quizlet and other...

flashcard apps, there will already be sets that have been created by other learners. Totally. You can just download other people's decks. It's fabulous. Yeah. You don't have to go in and input and create your own. You can, but often there's ones that are already... already there and available to you. What about textbooks? Textbooks are good as guides, usually accompanied by lessons, I would say. Yeah. As a kind of visual...

an audio learner, I really enjoy watching things. So I used to watch and still do sometimes the Wakahuya documentaries, which are like a half hour. profile of a kaumatua native speaker. And for me, it was at my level too. Something else to consider when you're tapping into the resources you're going to use, it needs to be at your level.

If it's beyond you, it's going to be too hard. If it's below you, it's going to be too easy and you get bored. So just be mindful of that. I love listening. So an audio book, a podcast. Reo Irirangi Māori, Māori radio stations. Waiata Māori. Waiata Māori, expose your taringa to te reo Māori. So just a list of resources that you can think about. Look out for audio books.

Podcasts. Wayata. There's lots of good playlists out there now. Real Irirangi Māori, Māori radio stations. Whakata Māori. So like Māori television, which you can watch on demand. Yeah, there's a suite of... Te Reo Māori learning shows online there. There's a whole lot of different YouTube channels and...

On that, you've got, like, social media channels, people who are sharing content on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. You've got just, like, general learning apps. Go to your app store. Search Te Reo Maori. Yeah, there'll be heaps. Textbooks. Yeah, Māori Made Easy is one example. Tēnā koe, Scotty. Books that are in te reo, you know, like...

Some reading, you know, some sort of like form of entertainment, but you're also maybe highlighting new kupu along the way. And in particular, especially if you're near te timotanga or te hairinga, children's books. Really, really great because the language is really simple and there's that repetition in children's books. E-books. Electronic copy of a book. And then, I don't know if we class this as resources, but...

other speakers, other learners, like they're going to be your, your biggest resource. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Okay. We're kind of nearing the end of this episode, but.

Here's some ideas about how you can put this all together. You know your why. You know who's involved, who you're doing this with. You know when you're doing the learning. You know what you're using. So here's another idea that you might like to implement. When it comes to language planning, people talk about activity and domain. So like basing the learning around an activity that you and your whanau or your group.

participate in already and enjoy. Like going fishing. Like if that's an activity that you enjoy and you do, you can do some learning in that activity. Or a domain. So a domain that you or your group frequent, which might be, I don't know, the lounge or the kitchen. So here's an example. So one activity is eating dinner. That's an activity. That's something we all do.

So if your language plan is for you and your whānau, the people in your whare, let's take eating dinner as an example activity. Now before we get to dinner, we're going to do the preparation. We're going to start collecting all the kupu that we need that pertain to that activity. We're going to collect the kupu for plates, knives and forks, salt and pepper. Then we're going to start even collecting the phrases that we need.

Pass me the. How is it? I've finished. I'm full. So now we're prepared for that activity. We've collected all the kupu, all the vocab, all the kianga, all the phrases that we can use. And then we want to make it available to us while we're engaging in that activity. So we might have done some study. We might have done some prep. But then one example of how we can make it available to us in that activity.

is have prepared some little placemats that have those kupu and phrases on them and they're kind of just like right there in front of us. Little prompts. And then, you know, we've committed to this as a group, as a part of the plan that... When we sit down to have dinner, that's going to be our time to practice using te reo as much as we can.

And I'd like to add that it doesn't necessarily mean we have to only speak in te reo. We can maybe just swap those kupu for kupu Māori. Yeah. We've dedicated an activity to doing that. Whereas if we just say, oh, we're going to do it all the time, it becomes this huge mammoth task. Yeah. But we're just like focusing on one little activity at the moment. And that might be our focus for the week. And so like after a week.

We now know how to say those things. It becomes quite normal. And we can move on to maybe breakfast the next week. Yeah. Because there's a whole other set of words for breakfast things. Exactly. So some other times that might work are like driving to work or driving to an activity. Maybe like you're saying, you go fishing. It doesn't necessarily have to be the whole time fishing. Maybe it's just the car trip there. Yeah.

Or the time after dinner. Or the time while you're getting ready for school. So many different segments in the day that we can dedicate. That's a good one. In the car, a lot of language in the car. Jump in, put your seatbelt on. You know, like things like that. So that's an example of activity-based learning. An example of location-based learning might be the living room. Again, if we're doing it with our whānau and our whare, let's say, okay.

For this week, while we're in the living room, we're going to try and speak as much te reo as we can. Again, do the prep. Collect the words. Collect the kianga you need. Everyone, you know, like... Knows them or learns them And then also we might have them available to us Maybe on the wall Via post-it notes And then that's our commitment For the week That's really practical, I like that a lot Once we've done that for a week

You know, the idea of having those post-it notes up is to learn them and not keep them there forever. Take them down and then move on to another area in the whare. Kia ora. That's our...

Tips in terms of language planning Te whaka mahere reo I think that's really practical Like I mentioned This works These things We're sharing them with you Because they work And you've got to make it work for you Everyone's different My final advice would be keep it fun. Keep it relevant to you and to your life. Kia ora. Nō reira, tēnā tatou e te iwi e whaimai nei i a māua pahu pahu. Ai, tēnā kutou. ākāt, hei konara. Hei konamai. Everyday Māori is supported by Te Mātāwai. Kia u kaipo anō te reo.

If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private... tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast.

spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply.