English Writing - Paraphrasing

Hi, my name is Rebecca and in today's lesson we're going to be talking about paraphrasing.

Now what is paraphrasing and why is it important?

Paraphrasing is expressing the same ideas that you have heard or read in your own words,

in different words.

Why is it difficult to do this?

Because sometimes when we hear something or read something that sounds quite good, we

have a tendency to want to copy that.

However, we can't because that's called copying.

The proper word for that is called plagiarism, which is actually looked upon quite seriously

as an offense in universities and in academic life in general and also in professional life.

So it's really important for you to learn to be able to express something that you have

heard or read about in your own language.

So I'm going to show you in this video some strategies to help you to do that.

Let's look at what they are.

Ok, so I have here six different techniques you can use when you want to paraphrase something

or when you want to express something in your own words.

And I'm going to give you some examples as we go along of each one.

The first one is to use a synonym for the word in the sentence.

So for example, I'm just going to grab my examples here.

Alright, so if your original sentence is "The hardest language to learn is Mandarin."

The hardest language to learn is Mandarin.

If I want to paraphrase that sentence, I could say "The most difficult language to learn

is Mandarin."

So what I've done here is I've substituted "most difficult" for "hardest".

This is one way, but it's still not a good paraphrase because it's too close to the original

sentence.

So I could now change a couple of words.

If my original sentence is "The hardest language to learn is Mandarin."

I could say "The most difficult language to master is Mandarin."

Now I've changed two parts.

I've changed "hardest" to "most difficult" and I've changed "learn" to "master".

This is better, but it still sounds a lot like the original, doesn't it?

OK.

So here's another option.

We could say "Mandarin is one of the most difficult languages to master."

Now we have a more successful paraphrase because we've changed not only words using different

synonyms, we've also changed the order of the words.

So we have a more effective paraphrase and that would be a good one.

Alright?

Let's look now at a second method.

The second method is to use an antonym.

An antonym, as you know, is a word that means the opposite.

So this is a fairly easy technique which you can fall back on when you're really not sure

what else to do.

An example of this would be instead of saying "The man is tall."

You could say "The man is not short."

OK?

Instead of saying "The school is far away."

You could say "The school is not near."

This is an example of using antonyms.

It's a fairly basic, simple technique and you can use it once in a while, not all the

time, but you can use it successfully.

Alright.

The third way is to use a phrasal verb.

So let's look at an example of this.

She discarded her used lipstick case in the trash can.

She discarded her used lipstick case in the trash can.

Let's suppose that we want to replace the word "discarded" with a phrasal verb.

So what could you use?

Do you know what it means to discard something?

To discard something means to throw it away.

That's right.

So we could use here "She threw away her used lipstick case."

Instead of "She discarded."

Because if you keep using the same words that were used in your original passage, whether

it's a reading passage or a listening text, then that would not be considered paraphrasing.

OK?

So what we're looking for is to successfully substitute those words with our own words

and also to resist the temptation to copy or use those words no matter how wonderful

they may be.

OK?

Let's look at another technique and this is sometimes being able to use a general verb.

So for example, if you had a sentence that said, "The factory manufactures boxes."

Alright?

"The factory manufactures boxes."

You could substitute it with a synonym like, "The factory produces boxes."

Or you could use a more general verb, "The factory makes boxes."

It's not as effective, but at least you're not using the same word.

Alright?

And lastly, we could use phrases.

So for phrases, what we mean is something like this.

Let's suppose that our original sentence is, "Many people in Canada are bilingual."

OK?

"Many people in Canada are bilingual."

So let's suppose that you want to find a substitute for the word "bilingual."

What could you say?

Well, what does "bilingual" mean?

"By" is a prefix which means "to" and "lingual" has to do with languages.

"Bilingual" means you speak two languages.

So you could just use a phrase to elaborate on that word or to explain that word.

So you could say, "Many people in Canada speak two languages," or, "Many people in Canada

are bilingual."

These two sentences are the same, but at the same time, you haven't copied the exact words.

Again, more successfully, you would also be changing the structure of the sentence and

not only individual words, but these are some techniques to do that.

Now, what happens if you find a particularly delightful sentence or word in your reading

passage, and you really don't want to paraphrase it or you don't know how to paraphrase it?

OK?

Both of these situations can occur.

So what do you do then?

Well, in that case, it is possible to use a quotation, which is what I have here as

your last option.

You can put the quotation, you can use an entire sentence and put it in quotation marks.

You could use certain expression and put it in quotation marks.

When I'm going like this, it means quotation marks, OK?

Because quotation marks consist of two commas, two apostrophes at the top and two apostrophes

at the end of it, so that's called a quotation.

So when people go like this, they mean quotation.

And if you saw that episode of Friends, then you'll know what I'm talking about, where

Ross does something similar to that, OK?

So these are some techniques that you can use for paraphrasing, which is a really important

skill in academic life, in your TOEFL exam, in your IELTS exam or any other exam or any

other type of writing you may need to do in your life, all right?

So I hope I've been able to help you with that.

Good luck with paraphrasing.

Bye for now.