Mrs.

Nemir 1LMD Study Skills

Paraphrasing
1. Explore the following examples. Section A represents the original text (without
modification) whereas section B represent the Paraphrase.

A B
Her life spanned years of incredible change for She lived through the exciting era of women's
women as they gained more rights than ever liberation.
before.

Giraffes like Acacia leaves and hay, and they can giraffe can eat up to 75 pounds of Acacia leaves
consume 75 pounds of food a day. and hay daily.
Symptoms of influenza include fever and nasal A stuffy nose and elevated temperature are
congestion. signs you may have the flu.

2. Now try to draw a comparison between the two sections A and B.

A B

Same idea
Different wording Different wording

3. Rewrite these passages with your own words. Make sure to keep the same meaning
for each.

a. Any trip to Italy should include a visit to Tuscany to sample the region's exquisite wines.
b. The price of a resort vacation typically includes meals, tips and equipment rentals, which makes
c. your trip more cost-effective.
d. He has tons of stuff to throw away
in fact, you have just paraphrased the previous sentences. But, how healthy is your paraphrase?

4. What is paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing involves taking a passage - either spoken or written - and rewording it. Writers
often paraphrase to deliver information in a more concise way. When paraphrasing, it is important
to keep the original meaning so that the facts remain intact. Basically, you are writing something in
your own words that still expresses the original idea.

Paraphrasing is used to:

➢ Rewrite a text in your own words.

➢ Deliver information in a concise and clear way.
➢ Avoid PLAGIARISM:

There is a fine line between plagiarism and paraphrasing. If the wording, or even the sentence
structure, of the paraphrased text is too close to the wording of the original content, it will look like

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you are trying to pass off someone else's words as your own. This is plagiarism, which is unethical
and even illegal.

Consider these examples: (quoting might be a solution)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our
enemies, but the silence of our friends."

…because In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our
friends.

A. Paraphrasing is NOT: Changing a couple of words.

Deleting a couple of words or phrases.
Rearranging the order of the words.
B. How to Paraphrase:

➢ Read the passage carefully o Identify the main ideas of the passage.
➢ Identify important words or phrases.
➢ Put the main points in your own words.

C. Useful techniques of paraphrasing

An effective paraphrase includes more than one of the following techniques. If you use only one of
these techniques when paraphrasing, you have not paraphrased effectively.

1. Change a word from one part of speech to another: noun to verb

Original: Medical professor John Swanson says that global changes are influencing the spread of
disease.

Paraphrase: According to John Swanson, a professor of medicine, changes across the globe are
causing diseases to spread (James, 2004).

2. Use synonyms : declare to announce, threat, harm security..

Original: The U.S. government declared that the AIDS crisis poses a national security threat.
The announcement followed an intelligence report that found high rates of HIV infection could
lead to widespread political destabilization.

Paraphrase: The government of the United States announced that AIDS could harm the nation's
security. The government warned the population after an important governmental study
concluded that political problems could result from large numbers of people infected with HIV
(Snell, 2005).

3. Change word order: this might include changing from active to passive voice or moving
modifiers to different positions.

Original: Angier (2001) reported that malaria kills more than one million people annually, the
overwhelming majority of them children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Paraphrase: Every year, more than a million people are killed by malaria, and most of the victims
are children who live in sub-Saharan Africa (Angier, 2001).

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4. Change the sentence structure and use different connecting words

Original: Although only about one-tenth of the world’s population lives there, sub-Saharan Africa
remains the hardest hit region, accounting for 72 percent of the people infected with HIV during
2000.

Paraphrase: Approximately 10 percent of the world’s population resides in sub-Saharan Africa.

However, this area of the world has the highest percentage of AIDS-related illnesses. In fact, in
2000, almost three-fourths of the population had the HIV virus (Bunting, 2004).

5. Caution: When paraphrasing, do not change key terms or proper nouns.

Note

Paraphrasing is slightly different than summarizing. When you summarize a passage, you focus on
restating only the main idea in your own words. Paraphrasing, on the other hand, aims to provide
most of the information in a slightly reduced form. Summaries are much shorter than the original
passage, while paraphrasing can be only somewhat shorter or longer.