Te Reo Māori: tuhituhi, pānui me te tātari i te reo
This domain covers the Scholarship Te Reo Māori assessment as a whole: it tests whether you can use te reo Māori with control and originality - sustaining written argument, unpacking authentic texts, and moving between reo ōkawa and reo ōpaki without losing accuracy. Marks sit on depth of thought, idiomatic range and grammatical control together, so a fluent but shallow answer and a clever but error-strewn one both plateau.
Core rules and concepts
- Whakatakoto whakaaro: each paragraph needs whakamārama (unpacking), taunakitanga (evidence) and a whakatau (position). Movement, not repetition.
- Passives: match the ending to the verb - -tia, -ngia, -hia, -ria, -mia, -whia, -ina, -a, -kia. Whakaako takes -na: ka whakaakona ngā tamariki.
- Agent emphatic: mā/nā + agent + e/i + verb. Mā te whānau te reo e ora ai; nā te kura i tautoko.
- Kīwaha, whakataukī, kupu whakarite: use sparingly and gloss the pūtake in your own reo; unexplained quotation reads as decoration.
- Nominalisation (-nga, -tanga) lifts register: te whakapakari i te reo, te nohotanga o te whānau.
- Particles (nei, nā, rā, hoki, anō, tonu, kē) create cohesion; markers notice a paragraph with none.
- Pānui: name the kaupapa, then the reo devices carrying it - metaphor, repetition, register shift.
Worked example
Prompt: Does the survival of te reo Māori depend more on whānau than on kura? Take a side, then answer with: Mā ngā whānau anō te reo e whakaora, ā, ko te kura tērā e tautoko ana. Reasoning: mā + agent + e + passive marks whānau as the responsible agent; anō insists "in turn"; the ā-clause subordinates the kura instead of listing it. Then one paragraph of taunakitanga, one of whakatau - no whakataukī unless you can gloss it in the next sentence.
Traps
- Missing or misplaced tohutō: Māori, whānau, kōrero, and every macron in a name you quote.
- Wrong passive ending, or an active sentence where the passive is required.
- Whakataukī used as ornament rather than argument.
- Retelling the passage instead of analysing the writer's pūtake and intent.
- Register drift - slipping into reo ōpaki mid-argument - and ignoring the stated audience.