The Māori Vocabulary Knowledge of Year 6 Students in Māori-Medium Education

Abstract

Since the 1970s there have been enormous efforts in Aotearoa/New Zealand to revitalize Māori as a language for everyday communication, particularly in educational settings. These efforts are given urgency by the fact that the most current estimate by Te Puni Kōkiri (the Ministry of Māori Development) indicates that Māori is spoken fairly well or better by only 20 % of the adult Māori population. Immersion education is making an important contribution to Māori language revitalization. As part of this initiative, thousands of new Māori words have been created to facilitate the teaching of all curriculum subjects through the medium of Māori in the compulsory school sector. However, many of these new terms are not yet well known and cause difficulties for those involved in Māori-medium education. This raises the question of whether the students being educated in these schools have adequate knowledge of vocabulary to achieve the objectives of the national curriculum through the medium of Māori. This study looked at the Māori vocabulary knowledge of Year 6 Māori-medium students whose major source of Māori language input was the classroom. One hundred and nine students from 12 schools throughout the North Island undertook tasks designed to assess their vocabulary knowledge and ability. The tasks, which were based on typical communicative and academic activities in the classroom, included measures of vocabulary size, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, writing and mathematical knowledge. Although there were problems in defining what represented an adequate vocabulary knowledge in the context of Māori-medium education, it was found that most of the students had sufficient knowledge to complete the tasks. However, it appeared that some students had difficulty with contemporary or technical terms, many of which are not yet established in the lexicon. Additional data on educational and social variables obtained through surveys of the parents and teachers showed that having at least one parent who was a teacher was significantly associated with student achievement on the tasks used in this study. It was clear from the research results and the researcher's observations that the schools participating in the study were providing a positive learning experience for their students. However, further expansion and standardization of the Māori lexicon, particularly in the areas covered by the school curriculum, will be necessary to help ensure that the schools have a long-term impact on both the revitalization of the language and enhanced educational achievement by Māori students.