Now when you paraphrase you are tiptoeing on the edge of a very dangerous rope, you are trying your best to rewrite some text, be it’s from a paper, be it from someone else’s thesis, or someone else’s ideas into your own words, you can very easily be caught out for plagiarizing and that is something that you absolutely do not want to do.
I’m going to be talking about how to paraphrase whilst keeping the meaning of the text, whilst rewriting the word in your own tone and also maintaining referencing and citation accurately.
So first thing you want to do to paraphrase some text is to;
- Read the citations or to read the text that it is that you are trying to paraphrase; Now most likely, you probably are looking at a paper and you’re interested in paraphrasing some parts of that paper to add to your literature review or maybe to add to your discussion or to your essay.
So the first thing you need to do is to actually read that paper, it’s very difficult to paraphrase without understanding what it is that that paper or where it is that the source is trying to say.
You then want to move on and summarize the study in your own words.
- Summarize the study: Now this is where the paraphrasing is going to essentially occur by magic without even trying, you are going to paraphrase. And that is by writing it in your own words. So however it is that you understood the text that you’ve read, whatever it is that you took away from it, write it in your own words, there’s a few key concepts that you want to bear in mind whilst writing.
- What are the aims of this study? What is the purpose, or the intention of the study that you’ve just read? That could be something that you write about?
- What’s the methods, and what are the key results that that that paper has mentioned? That to be able to paraphrase you need to be able to say what those results are in your own words.
So again, that could be a theme that you write about, or the significance so how significant is the paper, you could say the take home message in your own words, what would it be also be a theme that you take away from the people that you’ve just read.
- Write the sentences as your own version; and there are a few things that you can do when paraphrasing, one way of doing this is by;
- Starting the sentence at a different point other than following the same structure of how they began the sentence, you can always flip it and start from their end and make that your beginning. And this is simply just making like a mirror image of that sentence that already would leave to having a slightly different sentence with the same meaning.
- Use Synonyms: So rather than using the exact same words, if they say that this paper shows, rather than saying shows you can go ahead and use a different word you can use suggest or you can use illustrates just a different word. So it’s not going to be picked up by plagiarism checkers.
- Change Sentence Structure: The sentences are either written in the active voice or the passive voice. Active voice is where the sentence is led by the subject, whereas the passive voice is when the sentence is led by the object.
So again, you can kind of swap that around. And that can again lead to a completely different sentence with the exact same meaning.
- Break Sentence Down: Rather than taking the exact same sentence and trying to rewrite it, you can break it down into two ideas, although it may be the same sort of meaning.
But by breaking it down into two different ideas, you’ve automatically got completely different sentences, but definitely won’t be picked up by plagiarism checkers.
But do make sure that at the end of the sentences, you reference the citation to ensure that you are not saying that this is your own work, because ultimately, that is what you are trying to do just trying to take those sentences, not quote them directly, but just kind of change the sensors around a little bit to be able to paraphrase them.
- Verbalise your sentences: Make sure you’re constantly saying those sentences out loud. By verbalizing what it is that you’re writing, you can not only embed that in your memory so you understand the topic even better. You’re also able to ensure that what you’re saying actually makes sense.
A lot of the time when you’re reading a text and you try to write something that’s very similar to that, you can end up with sentences that don’t really make sense. If you just take what you’ve read and try to flip a sentence over. You might end up with sentences that don’t make sense.
Sentences won’t be coherent, and it just won’t flow very well. So ensure that as you’re writing, you’re constantly trying your best to vocalize what it is that you’re writing. Just to clarify exactly what it is that you’re saying, in your mind.
You have to take thoughts from other people take work from other people try to cite other people’s work, but make sure that you’re not copying text directly. And rather you’re paraphrasing and trying to organize that text in a way that sounds like your own voice but actually kind of retain the meaning of the original text and love it if you left me a comment down below letting me know if you have paraphrased before, the struggles that you’ve had with it in the past and maybe how you’re going to move forward and try to improve on your paraphrasing and essay writing.