Are you looking for a guide on how to paraphrase in a research paper or other academic texts?
Bullseye!
Here, you’ll get exactly that: a complete beginner’s guide to paraphrasing.
Using 3 simple examples of good and bad paraphrasing, I will explain to you how to skilfully rephrase the most important parts of your literature sources in your own words.
This will help you avoid being accused of plagiarism in your academic paper. And if you do it particularly elegantly, you might even receive an outstanding grade.
What is Paraphrasing?
The term “paraphrasing” comes from linguistics and simply means rewriting a text. When paraphrasing, you take the content of another document but present it by using your own words and grammar.
The technique of paraphrasing is not only used in academia. Journalists are true masters of paraphrasing because they have to put information they hear and read into their own words and efficiently highlight their essence.
This (hopefully) creates added value for the recipient of the text. In the videos on this channel, I also constantly paraphrase: I delve into my own treasure trove of knowledge and experience and research various sources to bring the most important information on a topic to the point for you.
The benefits of paraphrasing are obvious:
- The reader/viewer saves time
- The information can be transferred to a new context
- Unnecessary information is filtered out
And that’s exactly why you should paraphrase in your academic paper. But how do you know where the line is between paraphrasing and plagiarism? And how can ChatGPT help you to master this skill?
Stay tuned and you will find out.
Why it’s worth mastering paraphrasing
A significant portion of your academic writing is nothing more than paraphrased text. Whenever you consult ideas from external sources, there are two options:
- Direct quotation
- Indirect quotation (paraphrasing)
While you should only occasionally use direct quotes in your papers, for example for definitions, indirect quoting is required much more often. For example, if you want to provide an overview of the state of research in your literature section, correct paraphrasing is essential.
You can earn extra points by presenting the contents of the literature in an attractive and structured way. An outstanding academic paper must bring existing knowledge and facts into a logical and, if possible, new context that creates added value.
Flawless paraphrasing in you paper can help you achieve the following:
- You demonstrate that you have read deeply into the subject matter.
- The linguistic level of your work is elevated to an academically appropriate level.
- Your arguments manifest in a chain of logic.
I’ve kept you in suspense long enough. Let’s do some paraphrasing!
3 Examples of Good and Bad Paraphrasing
For the 3 examples, we’ll take the abstract of a well-known research article. On the basis of this abstract, we want to define the term “confirmation bias” in our own words.
This is the original text:
“Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand. The author reviews evidence of such a bias in a variety of guises and gives examples of its operation in several practical contexts. Possible explanations are considered, and the question of its utility or disutility is discussed.” (Nickerson, 1998, p.175)
#1 Mentioning the reference at the end
This is how a paraphrase could look like:
The confirmation bias denotes a phenomenon that originates from experimental psychology. It implies that individuals tend to evaluate novel pieces of information based on predefined beliefs and expectations. This includes the acquisition and selection of information sources (Nickerson, 1998).
Notice that I have intentionally changed the grammar and choice of words but kept the meaning of the original text.
#2 Mentioning the source in the text
You can also name the author(s) of the text you quote in your text:
According to Nickerson (1998), the confirmation bias is a notion describing the individual evaluation of novel pieces of information that is based on predefined beliefs and expectations. This includes the acquisition and selection of information sources.
However, this is also called an author-centric way of writing. If you review a lot of literature you should avoid using too many of these author-centric sentences.
#3 How you SHOULD NOT paraphrase
Let’s look at an example for a really bad paraphrase.
The confirmation bias denotes a phenomenon that describes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs (Nickerson, 1988).
The first part of the sentence has been described in different words than used in the original. But the second part of it is identical to the original text.
This is not a paraphrase and not a good indirect quote. If you do not turn this into a direct quote, a plagiarism scanner will flag this sentence.
Therefore, always change up the terminology you use and also try to find your own grammatical structure for what you want to say.
How to systematically learn to paraphrase
Learning to paraphrase for academic writing is just like any other skill.
The more you practice, the better you.
Great advice, I know! Luckily, I have more to offer.
This is how you can practice.
Use as the basis for your next academic paper a document (or several) in which you have so-called excerpts from the references you want to paraphrase.
An excerpt is simply a text passage that you have copied from a text into some sort of document. Sometime you can also give it a comment for what you want to use it, so you keep an overview of all the reading you have done.
This document or collection of documents is thematically organized, for example according to the main terms used in your work.
From this document, you pick out the most exciting text passages, that you want to use and paraphrase one by one.
Copy them into you final manuscript document and practice to rephrase them. Once you are done with one text passage, pick the next one from your collection document that seems appropriate for your argument.
This is how you connect one paraphrase with the next and build a whole chapter by putting them together like a puzzle.
These are the most important steps for this process:
- Conduct a literature search
- Read the abstracts and the parts of the papers that align with what you are looking for
- Copy text passages into your collection document (excerpting)
- Organize them thematically
- Selectively copy text passages from the collection document into your main document
- Paraphrase
- Connect the paraphrases with each other to form a unique argument
If you mix up these steps, it will quickly become confusing. There is nothing more frustrating than having to go back to your research because you realize that you haven’t collected enough text passages for a particular concept.
Now it’s time to practice, practice, practice.
Use ChatGPT to practice paraphrasing
In today’s world you can use tools like ChatGPT or QuillBot for paraphrasing. Doing so will save you a lot of time.
However, I recommend you use those tools to better understand the technique.
Do your first paraphrases manually and than give the same task to an AI.
If you compare the results, how exactly did the AI change the original wording and what can you learn from it?
When working with AI in the future, it will be important that you understand what it is that the AI is doing for you.
If you never practice paraphrasing yourself and let the AI do the work, you have learned nothing.
But if you learn the skill first and then use the AI to support you, you will be unstoppable.
Always stay in the driver’s seat. If you know how it works you can check if what the AI gives you is of good quality.
Otherwise, your fate is in the hand of an algorithm. And you do not want that, I suppose.