Title: Paraphrasing
Course: Study PrepProg - Improve Your English from B1 to B2 Level > Section: Reading and writing academic texts

An essential technique, paraphrasing enables you to restate others' ideas.

According to Bailey (2011, 50), paraphrasing involves rewriting a text in a way that the new version differs notably from the original, while it retains its meaning. Mastering this essential skill enables students to show their comprehension of the original text, and is also needed to avoid plagiarising.

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University defines paraphrasing as follows:

A paraphrase is your own rendition of essential information and ideas expressed by someone else, presented in a new form. [This is] one legitimate way (when accompanied by accurate documentation) to borrow from a source. [It is] a more detailed restatement than a summary, which focuses concisely on a single main idea. (Purdue OWL 2020.)

Paraphrasing and summarising are normally used together in essay writing, but whereas

•       summarising aims to only reduce information to a suitable length,

•       paraphrasing attempts to restate the relevant information.

For example, the following sentence:

There has been much debate about the reasons for the industrial revolution happening in eighteenth-century Britain, rather than in France or Germany.

could be paraphrased as:

Why the industrial revolution occurred in Britain in the eighteenth century, instead of on the continent, has been the subject of considerable discussion.

Note, that an effective paraphrase usually:

•       has a different structure to the original,

•       has mainly different vocabulary, and

•       retains the same meaning.

However, in some cases certain phrases from the original must be kept, since they are used specifically and cannot be replaced without altering their meaning, e.g. “industrial revolution” or “eighteenth century”.

Bailey, Stephen 2011. Academic writing: A handbook for international students (3rd ed.). London: New York: Routledge. https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/5761016/mod_resource/content/1/Academic%20Writing%20Bailey%203rd%20Edition.pdf. (opens in a new window) Accessed 2.4.2023.

Purdue OWL 2017. Paraphrase: Write It in Your Own Words. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/paraphrase_exercises/index.html . (opens in a new window) Accessed 17.9.2020.