One Step Now Education
December 13, 2024
intrinsic
In education, we aim for our students to love learning. We want them to see learning as its own intrinsic reward. Sometimes we motivate with grades, or tickets, or treats from the treasure box to encourage participation, homework completion, or good behavior. Countless articles have been written about intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Perhaps we should investigate these words.
Meaning
What is this word’s meaning and how does the word function?
Intrinsic and extrinsic are antonyms, or words that have opposite meanings. When I look up the entry for intrinsic in the dictionary, I find that intrinsic value or interest is “due to an (item’s) basic nature of character and not due to its connection to other things.” Synonyms, which are words with similar meaning, include real, essential, and true.
This word is an adjective. Adjectives modify nouns. We often see it modifying nouns like value, worth, merit, reward, and nature. When words commonly appear together like intrinsic quality and intrinsic importance we call that a collocation.
Structure
What are the elements that make up this word’s structure?
It was the structure that intrigued me about this word. Would that be the element <in> at the beginning? Is that a suffix <-ic>?
in + trins + ic
If that is the case I have a base of <trins>. I’d not seen a base like that before and had trouble brainstorming other words with that base, so that’s when I decided to investigate.
Then as I pondered further, I wondered if the <intr> was a form of the element <inter>.
intr + ins + ic
Curiouser and curiouser.
The entry for intrinsic in the Online Etymology Dictionary says this word is derived from Old French intrenseque, and right away I knew that looks could be deceiving. This wasn’t an <-ic> suffix at all, even though our word is an adjective.
The Old French intrenseque comes from Latin intresecus, an adverb meaning “on the inside.” From previous investigations on my own and with students I recognized the <secus> and <seque> as being perhaps related to the Latin sequi, or follow. More on that connection in Relatives.
My second hypothesis about this word’s sum was more in the right direction. The bound element <intra-> lends a sense of “within” to a base. This element is close to but not the same as <inter>.
Interestingly, the entry also says that the spelling began to conform to other adjectives ending in <-ic> in the 18th century. Sometimes the reason for a spelling is analogizing. Analogical change in linguistics is a change in form to match other items in the language. One example given by Wikipedia is the plural of octopus, which some say is octopi based on cactus/cacti or radius/radii. Some resources list octopuses as the plural form, following the English pluralization paradigm. The actual plural form in Latin is octopodes.
Relatives
What are the word’s relatives and history?
Intrinsic and extrinsic and its adverbial forms intrinsically and extrinsically do not make up much of a matrix. The etymological relatives prove more interesting.
The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root has an entry in Etymonline. The Latin root sequi, “to follow,” is derived from this root and is the source of sequence, sequel, and subsequent. This verb’s other principal part secutus gives us words like consecutive, persecute, and execution.
This PIE root also gave us the Latin root secundus from which our word second is derived.
Other etymological relatives spent some time being Frenchified. These include sue, suit, suite, associate, and pursue.
And I love that an extrinsic reward may also be a consequence.
Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
All of the graphemes in this word are single-letter graphemes spelling expected phonemes. The only thing that might be of note is the /z/ spelled by <s>. This often happens after a nasal like /n/ or /m/; think bombs or whimsy, but not always; think inside or himself.
Next Steps
What can we learn next about the English orthographic system?
What about studying antonyms?
Although this word did not have the <-ic> suffix, that might be a good study.
A class may begin collecting examples of words where <s> spells /z/. Do they notice any patterns?
Let’s take that first Next Step a little further:
SETTING UP THE STUDY
Things are sometimes better defined by what they are not.
In fact, the base of define itself, <fine>, comes from finis, the Latin word for “boundary; end.” When we define something, we are stating the boundaries, or limits, of the sense of the word.
When we have studied antonyms, we can compare and contrast different concepts and select more precise vocabulary when writing.
We might begin planning a lesson on antonyms by gathering the data set. You might look at novels you are reading, chapters in your textbook, or you could even do a Google Search of “common antonyms fourth graders should know.” From there, I can select words that I think are appropriate for my student(s). We might select miserable/ecstatic as opposed to happy/sad or polite/rude instead of nice/mean.
CONDUCTING THE STUDY
From there, we might think of activities where students must consider both words. We might set up a matching game where each word is on a card or tile and are arrayed face down in front of the players. On each turn, a player turns over two cards. If the two cards are antonyms, the player keeps them. If they are not, they are turned back over and play passes to the next player.
Prior to playing the game, you could have words on cards and students could brainstorm possible antonyms.
We might also think of the antonyms as two poles on a continuum:
<—————————————————————>
miserable ecstatic
You could then have other words that students would arrange along the continuum with words closer in sense to miserable being on one end of the continuum and words closer in sense to ecstatic, such as thrilling, on the other end. This activity allows you to increase student’s vocabularies even further.
You could even expand your study of antonyms into content areas. What about length/width in math, defeat/victory from social studies, or condensation/evaporation in science?
What are some other ways you’ve taught students about antonyms? Reply and let me know.
Stay curious,
Brad
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