2.0 Paraphrasing
In this lesson, you will learn how paraphrasing, summarizing, and rearranging words are different.
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to...
- paraphrase a passage appropriately while retaining pertinent data
- identify and distinguish among examples of "paraphrased" material
- identify the proper approach to paraphrasing
- determine whether or not information qualifies as common knowledge and, therefore, whether or not it needs to be cited
Before we dive into the lesson, take a minute to read the following few lines from an interview I recently conducted:
Me: So, you got into pretty big trouble, huh?
Him: Yeah, I mean, I thought if I said it my own way, it wasn't plagiarism.
Me: Well, even if you "say it your own way," you still need to give credit to the source.
Him: Yeah, I know that now.
Me: By the way, what did you mean when you said, "said it my own way"?
Him: I mean that I rearranged the words, and I found a lot of synonyms for stuff.
Me: Uh-huh. Well, what are you up to now?
Him: After I failed that class, the college I was going to go to wanted to know why. When I told them what happened, they took back my acceptance.
Me: Really?
Him: Yeah. Now I can only find work as a test subject.
Me: What does that mean?
Him: I sign up for medical studies and let them test stuff out on me. Right now I'm doing a study for a high abrasion toothpaste. It's not going well.
Me: What do you mean?
Him: Look, six teeth have fallen out. (smiles - sure enough, six teeth are missing.)
Me: Sick.
If you have stories like this, click on the blog link under Unit 2 and share!
Let's get this party started - NEXT