I have spent over 100 hours learning te reo Māori over the past 4 months! My comprehension has grown from only recognising a few kupu to being able to watch simple tv shows, movies and I’m even reading a book!
What makes up that 100 hours?
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Vocab Study: I use the digital flashcard app Anki to review vocabulary. I created flashcards for the 1000 most frequent words in te reo and make flashcards for 10 new words each day which I create from things I watch or read.
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Freeflow Listening: This is when I watch TV shows or movies without stopping to lookup words or meanings. I began by watching Darwin & Newts, moved onto Molly of Denali in March, and recently watched some of Ngā Kōtiro o Taranaki, Tōku Reo Kōkara, Mō te Ātea and the Disney Reo Māori films. I maintain a list of these on the Comprehensible Māori page.
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Intensive + Interactive Listening: With the same content as before, but for most new words I will pause to look them up, and usually note them down to make flashcards later. Interactive is just lookups, whereas in intensive I try to fully understand as much as I can including grammar.
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Interactive Reading: On my computer I have an app called Lute which I use to read various news articles and traditional stories. Read more about Lute here.
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Grammar Study: I have previously spent some time learning basic grammar through the Everyday Māori Podcast and the Māori Made Easy book.
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Interactive Reading with Audio: Reading a book in te reo along with the audiobook. I mark + lookup new words to sentence mine and turn into flashcards later on.
Te Ruānuku - The Alchemist
Reading and listening to build vocabulary and improve my comprehension in te reo Māori. There aren’t many books available in Māori, so out of the limited choices I choise Te Ruānuku as my first choice.
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I read the English version first to become familiar with the story. This allows me to focus more on the language and not get confused with the plot.
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It’s at a decent level, short (150 pages) so it’s not too difficult as my first book.
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It has an audiobook available which is very important. I read along with the audio which helps my brain connect writing to the correct pronounciation and keep me going at a good pace. I bought the audiobook on libro.fm, supporting a local bookshop.
While reading I use a light pencil to underline new words. After each half a page or so I pause to lookup definitions and note them at the bottom of the page. This works for me as it doesn’t distrupt my reading that much, and I like being able to understand the new words as they appear.
The Alchemist doesn’t have chapters, but it does have a little separater between each little section (anywhere between half a page to several). So I can’t say a chapter number I’m on, but I can say that I’ve read 110 pages out of 147. That’s 3 and a half hours of the audiobook, but took 6 hours including lookups. I’ve created flashcards for new words up to page 44 to satisfy my rate of 10 new words each day.
I didn’t reach my 30 hours goal in April (26.3 hrs), mostly because I got busy in the last couple days. I’m not too far off finishing my first reading of Te Ruānuku, after which I have a choice between Pounamu Pounamu and Hare Pota 1. I’ll re-read Te Ruānuku once I’ve got most of the new words down in a couple months time. The other goal I set was to reach 950 in the frequency list, which I have, and will be properly completed this coming month.