Showing posts with label Paraphrasing. Show all posts
The Art of Storytelling: Mastering Paraphrasing
As an avid reader, I love stories about revolutionaries, abolitionists, orators, or great public speakers. I am particularly drawn to stories pulled from African American history: Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Madam C.J. Walker, and my favorite, Shirley Chisholm, the first African American female to run for President of the United States.
You might have thought I read an entire book about the life of Ms. Chisholm, based on my mentioning she was the first African American female to run for the presidency. I actually did not read a book about Ms. Chisholm. Instead, I pulled various online resources about the life of the former Congresswoman from the Smithsonian and the U.S. House of Representatives websites, as well as scholarly articles about her life and history as an educator.
So, is this how paraphrasing works? You pull pieces of information from different resources and articles and put them in a paper? Well, sort of. As you continue reading, you will find this post is intended to help you get comfortable with paraphrasing by providing some encouraging insight on how to tell a story. Crafting your story from your interpretation of course assignment readings and research articles may appear to be a daunting task. Still, your professor will be impressed by your efforts in understanding the content from the course, which ultimately aids in your application of the gained knowledge to your profession and your passion.
My story is similar to Ms. Chisholm’s—I am somewhat of a revolutionary, or as my mom would call me, headstrong. I have New York and Caribbean roots (Dad was Jamaican American), and I love my current full-time career as an assistant professor. Ms. Chisholm’s facts are easy to paraphrase for me because I so easily relate her life to my own story and experiences. We both possess one key element, which is that we both hold a commitment to social change.
So, when you paraphrase, think of how you can relate the information to your own story. Here are some tips that may be helpful:
1. Determine your interest: When reviewing your course assignments, find information that is of importance to you. The assignment is much easier to interpret when you have interest, even if it is just a small part of a chapter from a course assignment.
2. Consider social change: I get it, there may not be any articles directly applicable to you or your background. Therefore, find content that encourages and inspires you to be a change agent. Ask yourself, what could you or what would you do differently from this article that would contribute to social change in your career field?
3. Use those bright highlighters: Highlight and note parts of articles and chapters that stand out to you the most. Often times, those points will help you to understand the material from the article better. Highlighting also shows your professor that you know the text, which further helps you to understand the assignment with proper execution.
4. Have no fear, my friend: Do not be fearful of words that you don’t know the definition of. Highlight those words and use the thesaurus tool in Microsoft or look up the meaning of the highlighted word. No harm in looking up the meaning of individual words to get your point across in a scholarly manner without copying something directly from the article.
5. And Again, re-read! There may be areas you may have missed or additional areas you want to highlight.
Plagiarism, Citations, and Quotations: In your reading, you may find out that an author’s description of a topic is clear, concise, and well written; therefore, it may be easy and effortless to just directly copy the content into your course assignment. Before you do, ask yourself, “did I give the author credit for their work?”, “did I quote or paraphrase?”, and “is this something I would say in getting my point across about the content?”
1. Professional Advice: Review your work. Ask yourself, “Is this what I want to say about this article?” “How did this article resonate with me?” “Did I cite facts?” “Did I properly give my interpretation of this article?” and the most critical question, “Did I answer my professor’s question?”
2. Be confident: Most importantly, be confident! You are the author, so your text, your interpretation, or your story is vital for the learning experiences, not only for yourself but for everyone else who reads your writing.
As you are crafting your own interpretation of something you read or are paraphrasing, picture it as the most exciting topic one has ever wanted to read. Spare no details and confidently present to the reader, as an author, your interpretation of what you read. Think about who you might be helping as a result of your storytelling.
Patrese Nesbitt is a writing intern at the Walden University Writing Center. She enjoys reading articles that are inspirational, in addition to doing research on how certain physical movement patterns help with mental health. As a doctoral candidate in Walden University’s Public Health Program, she is eager to find ways to intrinsically and extrinsically motivate people to live an improved and upgraded quality of life.
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Paraphrasing Generators Impede Learning
The most common questions I hear from Walden students are about how they can save time. Specifically, students often ask whether they can use X program to help them with their writing. The programs students are asking about can vary, but common ones I hear about are APA reference generators, spell check, and Grammarly. The question is understandable: You are busy students, balancing work, family, and school, and you have limited time. If there’s a way to save you time, I’m with you!
Unfortunately, my answer to this type of question often disappointments the students asking it. Rather than a whole-hearted endorsement, I explain that potentially the program they are asking about could be useful, but that all writers need to be careful that they are using these programs judiciously. I go on to say that English grammar, academic writing, and APA are complex and often dependent on context, which computer programs sometimes can’t understand. My recommendation to these students, then, is that if they must use these programs, use and review their results carefully.
Another Chapter in the Story: Paraphrasing Generators
That seems like the end of the story, right? Well, not quite. My standard response to this question changed slightly when I learned about a new type of program promising amazing results to academic writers: paraphrasing generators. There are many versions of paraphrasing generators, but all of them promise quick and easy paraphrasing that avoids plagiarism. The problem with these paraphrasing generators, however, is that they aren’t really paraphrasing generators—they are really synonym generators, which isn’t true paraphrasing.
Let’s take a closer look at why paraphrasing generators aren’t really paraphrasing at all. Paraphrasing is a difficult academic writing skill because it’s complex. Strong paraphrasing requires critical thinking where a writer represents a source’s ideas in their own voice. What makes a paraphrase in your own voice? Three things: (1) focus on the key information needed for the context of your paragraph; (2) use of your own word choice; and (3) use of your own sentence structure. Complex, right?
Paraphrasing generators only address one of these three parts: swapping out words with synonyms. They can’t determine the most relevant information to include, how it fits into the context of your paragraph and your own ideas, and how to rephrase the ideas into your own voice, all essential parts of a paraphrase.
The other issue is because paraphrasing generators rely on synonyms, the result can be strangely worded at best and unintelligible at worst. Synonyms are tricky things; most of the time writers must choose synonyms carefully to avoid changing the sentence’s meaning. Using synonyms judiciously is important when using even one synonym in a sentence, but entire sentences of synonyms become so unclear that the original meaning is entirely lost.
Let’s Take a Look: A Paraphrasing Generator Result
Let’s take a look at these issues in practice so we can see the actual result of using a paraphrasing generator. Here is an original quote and the result of a paraphrasing generator. Read both carefully, then ask yourself: Does the result from the paraphrasing generator accurately reflect the original quote’s meaning? Does it sound like a new, original voice?
Original Quote: "Online teaching observations are valuable tools for documenting and improving teaching effectiveness" (Purcell, Scott, & Mixson-Brookshire, 2018, p. 5).
Result from Paraphrasing Generator: Web based showing perceptions are profitable instruments for reporting and enhancing adequacy.
Hopefully you’ve generated some ideas in response to my questions above. Here are my responses:
- The result from the paraphrasing generator changes the meaning of the original. Where the original quote refers to “valuable tools,” the paraphrasing generator says “profitable instruments.” Something being valuable is very different than being profitable, which has connotations of monetary gain that valuable doesn’t.
- The paraphrasing generator also doesn’t make sense! Where the original talked about “observations,” the paraphrasing generator says “showing perceptions.” If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what “showing perceptions” even are. Additionally, the phrase “instructing adequacy” from the paraphrasing generator isn’t clear.
- The paraphrasing generator doesn’t create a new, original voice because it relies on the original quote’s sentence structure. If we were to diagram these two sentences—marking out their grammatical structure—they would be exactly the same.
As you can see, the paraphrasing generator doesn’t have very good results. But beyond that—beyond all of the problematic aspects we’ve discussed so far about paraphrasing generators—there’s one final drawback:
Programs like paraphrasing generators get in the way of your learning! They offer a quick solution, but this short-term gain impedes long-term progress. If writers use paraphrasing generators, they aren’t engaging with the research they are reading, learning how to put it in their own voice and developing their paraphrasing skills.
Paraphrasing generators have a certain appeal, especially if writers are looking to save time or they believe their promises of avoiding plagiarism. However, they are much more problematic than the other programs students often ask me about. While Grammarly, spell check, and APA reference generators can be used cautiously and still be helpful, my conclusion? Paraphrasing generators should be avoided altogether; they simply have too many drawbacks to be helpful to academic writers.
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Thursday Thoughts: Paraphrasing Effectively
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