Writing skills
• Write the following in your won words:
• Everyone should select a presentation topic by Monday and bring it
to class.
• What is it called when you write a text in your own words?
Writing skills Paraphrasing
• What is paraphrasing?
• Paraphrase is one of three ways of using another writer's work in your
own writing, the other two being quotation and summary. The aim of
paraphrasing is to change the words in the original text, while keeping
the same meaning. This is different from quotation, which has the
same words (as well as the same meaning). As the words have been
changed, a paraphrase should not use quotation marks ("..."). Summary
differs from paraphrase in that a summary is shorter than the original,
whereas a paraphrase is the same length. When you paraphrase
another writer's ideas, you will need to use in-text citations to
acknowledge the source (this is the same for all three ways of using
another writer's work). The following table summarises these points.
Con…
Why paraphrase?
• Effective paraphrasing is essential in order to avoid plagiarism. A
mistake many beginning academic writers make is to change a few
but not enough of the words, leaving copied chunks from the original
- so it is part paraphrase, part quotation, but without quotation marks
(and therefore stealing a writer's words).
• It is usually favoured over quotation for two reasons: first, it allows
you to demonstrate understanding of the original work; and second,
it allows you to integrate the idea into your own writing to support
your idea.
How to paraphrase
• A good paraphrase is different from the wording of the original,
without altering the meaning. There are three vocabulary techniques
you will need to use in order to achieve this, with good paraphrasing
employing a mix of all three. They are:
• changing words;
• changing word forms;
• changing word order.
• The skill of paraphrase is another reason why it is important to
understand more than just the meaning of a word, but also know
its different word forms.
Example
• Below are two different examples of paraphrase, with an explanation of
how each original text has been changed.
• Original text 1, from Pears and Shields (2013, p.113)
• Paraphrase: A restating of someone else's thoughts or ideas in your own
words.
• Paraphrase of text 1
• Paraphrasing is a restatement of another person's ideas or thoughts using
your own words.
•
In this example, the following changes have been
made:
• Paraphrasing ⇒ Paraphrase (change word form)
• involves ⇒ requires (change word)
• changing a text ⇒ a text to be altered (change word order)
• changing ⇒ altered (change word)
• so that it is ⇒ in a way which makes it (change words)
• dissimilar to ⇒ different from (change words)
• the source ⇒ the original (change words)
• yet retains all the meaning ⇒ while keeping the same meaning
(change words)
Example
• Original text 2, from Bailey (2000, p.21)
• Paraphrasing involves changing a text so that it is quite dissimilar to
the source yet retains all the meaning.
•
• Paraphrase of text 2
• Paraphrase requires a text to be altered in a way which makes it
different from the original while keeping the same meaning.
Con…
• In this example, the following changes have been made:
• Paraphrase ⇒ Paraphrasing (change word form)
• restating ⇒ restatement (change word form)
• someone else's ⇒ another person's (change words)
• thoughts or ideas ⇒ ideas or thoughts (change word order)
• in ⇒ using (change word)
Your turn
• The class is going to be divided into 5 groups and paraphrase each
paragraph of reading1 on page 58, considering the tips discussed
earlier.