- EDUCATOR DISCS & VIDEOS -

Although each Tutorial Mode at each Level is given a a Lesson Number - Level 1 Mode 6 being designated as Lesson 6, for example -, teachers and students should be aware that the language material in such a lesson will not necessarily correspond to what one could cover in the course of of - say - a one-hour lesson at school or university. In particular, the language material in Tutorial Mode 1 on each Level will nearly always take students considerably more than one hour to assimilate.

When working on Mode 1 at any Level, the key thing is for the user to note the number of either the Grammar Note or the Vocabulary Expression at which he or she ends any particular study session. With either of these numbers noted, the student can then use the input option boxes which appear on screen whenever the program is run in Mode 1, in order to direct his or her computer to return to the right point in the lesson for the next study session in Mode 1.

Mode 10 (Play-Way Mode) on each Level is particularly flexible as regards time, because it has been specially designed to enable students, or their teachers, to set their own targets as to how difficult or easy they want to make the play-way language-learning game. The harder they make the game, the longer it will take; the easier they make the game, the faster it will be completed. So Mode 10 is a very convenient way of usefully filling in any unexpected free time, because it can be made to take up either a longer or a shorter period of time, as the user wishes.

Teachers will appreciate the opportunity the program gives them of adding questions of their own to Mode 10 at any Level, whenever they see a particular need for this - e.g. to introduce words and phrases from a particular Maori dialect which they may wish to teach their own students.

When running the main tutorial program of the "Grammar Ladder" in any mode except the Dictation Test Mode, students will normally find help readily at hand in the form of a Help Button, if they encounter questions to which they do not know the answers.

However, during every run of the program, the user is called on to make at least one attempt to answer each and every question posed. The Help Button, which is available at all Levels and in all tutorial Modes except Mode 5 (Dication Test Mode), only becomes accessible after some attempt has been made to answer any given question.

Once the student has attempted to answer a question, if the student's answer is wrong, help with the answer to that question then becomes available from the computer at the click of a Help Button, at all Levels on this program and in all Modes except Mode 5 - Dictation Test Mode.

In Dictation Test Mode, the correct text is put up on screen in due course for comparison with the student's inputs, which are also displayed on screen, and the student is additionally given the option of having a printout of the correct text, and a printout of the text that he or she has keyed in.

Although the six progress Levels are arranged in ascending numerical order, the lessons and tutorial Modes within each Level are not arranged in order of ascending difficulty. Whilst many students and teachers will find it a good idea to take a look at Mode 1 on each Level first, since it contains the Basic Vocabulary, Pronunciation, and Grammar Notes for all the lessons on the same Level, some will prefer to go through the new vocabulary for each Level before attempting to work on the grammar.

Many people will see the benefit of copying out the Grammar Notes in handwriting as an aid to learning, but others may feel that points of grammar can best be learned intuitively - and the program gives people with this point of view the option of omitting the Grammar Notes entirely.

Different teachers and students will also approach the various comprehension tests differently. For each written and audio-lingual Maori comprehension passage on the disc, there are three tutorial Modes: a) with questions and answers in English; b) with answers required in Maori, and questions presented bilingually; and c) with questions presented in Maori only, and answers also required in Maori only.

Whilst younger students may find it convenient to work through the comprehension tests in exactly the order indicated in the above paragraph, more advanced students may well derive more value from attempting a dictation exercise or a translation exercise after working on the comprehension test with questions and answers in English - rather than going straight back to the same comprehension passage with questions presented bilingually and answers required in Maori. They might also derive more benefit from then going on to a study session on the Grammar Notes, before dealing with the Comprehension Test Mode with questions and answers in Maori only.

The computer CD's many learning options give students and teachers of the Maori Language a very great deal of flexibility, and users should explore all the options available, to find out which will help them the most. They can then concentrate on whatever suits their own Maori Language needs at any particular point in time.

Students who have not previously learned any Grammar should note that this CD comes complete with an Alphabetical Glossary (readily printable out), explaining almost every grammatical term used.

In addition to this Glossary, this computer CD also has an Alphabetical Index of grammatical terms, which lists grammatical terms alongside references to the Levels and Grammar Notes in which they are used on the CD. Points of Grammar dealt with in the Grammar Notes are listed in ascending numerical order in a separate on-screen Table of Contents for the Grammar Notes. The Alphabetical Index and the Table of Contents can both be printed out, to make it easier for you to choose appropriate practice Levels at your leisure.

Students without Maori-English dictionaries should make full use of the separate Maori-English and English-Maori Alphabetical Vocabulary Lists provided with this computer CD. Covering nearly all the Maori words and idioms used in this resource, these Alphabetical Vocabulary Lists make the use of a dictionary unnecessary for the lessons provided on this computer CD - especially as you can easily print out the CD's Alphabetical Vocabulary Lists for revision purposes, provided you have a printer attached to your computer.

As regards the section of the CD containing some exercises on Cook Islands Maori, these are all of an elementary nature and may therefore be of interest to Cook Islanders living outside the Cook Islands and wishing to begin teaching their children the language of their ancestors, as well as the Maori Language of New Zealand. Although the exercises on Cook Islands Maori are all of an elementary nature, each time they are run they present slightly different sentences from the total range of over a hundred and thirty thousand Cook Islands Maori sentences which this computer CD can generate.

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There are no handling, postage or shipping charges to pay - that's all included in the price; and delivery to countries other than New Zealand is always by airmail.