Speaking, Writing and Presenting
What this domain tests
This domain assesses your ability to produce spoken, written and presented Cook Islands Māori for a purpose and audience. Marks come from communication and structure as well as grammar: a technically correct text that ignores its audience is weak.
Core rules and concepts
- Plan for purpose, audience and register. A formal speech, a letter to an elder and a narrative for children need different openings, pronouns and levels of indirectness. Decide the relationship before you write.
- Use the clause frame accurately. Start with the tense/aspect particle, then the verb phrase, then the subject. Keep pronouns consistent: au, koe, aia, tāua/māua, tātou/mātou.
- Link ideas explicitly. Use connectives such as nō te mea (because), nō reira (therefore), engari (but), i mua i (before) and muri i (after) to show logical structure.
- Perform, don't just read. For presentations, mark stressed words, pause at paragraph breaks, make eye contact and use gesture that supports meaning. Pronounce vowel length and glottal stops consistently.
- Edit in layers. Check apostrophes and macrons, then possessive forms, then sentence variety, then register.
Worked example
Draft: Au kua haere ki te 'are o taku metua. Improved: Kua haere au ki te 'are o tōku metua. Reasoning: the tense particle kua comes first; the pronoun au follows it, not before it. Metua (parent) takes the o-class possessive tōku, so taku metua is the wrong possessive set. The glottal stop in 'are must be written. The improved sentence means “I have gone to my parent’s house.”
Traps that cost marks
Translating English sentence order; mixing possessive classes; dropping macrons and glottal stops; shifting register mid-text; overlong sentences with no connectives; and delivering a scripted speech without audience awareness.