Tips and Tricks for Students to Paraphrase Effectively
Students frequently need to get information from various sources and use them in their assignments or research articles. However, they are not allowed to copy and paste that information as it is. If they do it, the plagiarism percentage can increase, and they may face serious repercussions. That’s where paraphrasing comes in to help them.
Paragraphing is a skill that every student should master. It allows students to restate the data or information without changing the context and avoid plagiarism. Without that skill, they may be unable to complete their assignments without allegations. But unfortunately, most students don’t know how to paraphrase a piece of information properly.
If you also lack this skill and want to know the tips and tricks to paraphrase any written material, this article is for you. It will enlighten you with the best tips to paraphrase. And here they are:
Table of Contents
Understand the Overall Context
Whether paraphrasing a few words or a whole article, you must develop an understanding of the text. Knowing the context can help you a lot in the paraphrasing process. Students usually struggle to rewrite content when they don’t know its key idea.
In that case, even if they do, they do it wrong. That’s why most students rely more on the copy-paste method.
However, when you understand the key idea and know what to take from an article, you can quickly rewrite it in your own words and use vocabulary to prevent plagiarism. To comprehend the context, you should carefully read the whole text, even parts you don’t need. It can help you learn about the background of the entire discussion, and you will be able to summarize it effectively.
Focus on Ideas, Not Words
When you read an article or paragraph you want to rewrite, you should focus on the idea, not the words. This trick helps you avoid unintentionally getting influenced by the author’s writing style and vocabulary. And when you start paraphrasing the text, you have your own words to elaborate on the phenomena.
Focusing on ideas and ignoring the words and phrases that the original author has used can also assist you in avoiding accidental plagiarism.
Accidental plagiarism occurs when you paraphrase a text but somehow use the exact words the original author used. While you think your text is unique, modern and advanced plagiarism checkers can detect where you copied material from. So, avoid writing the exact words that the real author has used.
Alter the Sentence Structure
Changing the sentence structure is another excellent way of paraphrasing. Usually, most students don’t follow this trick and fail in effective paraphrasing. However, those who rely on this practice know it greatly helps in paraphrasing.
To change the sentence structure, you can convert the active voice to the passive voice or passive to active. Moreover, you can also rearrange the word order.
However, you should ensure that it conveys the exact message.
In addition, you can also break down a sentence into multiple ones. For example, if there is a long sentence with many connecting words, you should break the sentence and write short sentences. Whatever trick you use to modify sentence structure will help you eliminate plagiarism and sweeten your text.
Replace Words with the Most Matched Synonyms
Here is the easiest way to paraphrase any content. Almost every language has different words to describe the same things. You should utilize those words for paraphrasing. For example, if there is a sentence, “he is very happy today,” you can replace it with “he is extremely pleased today.” Changing only two words has done the job. Now your line is unique, and it also conveys the exact message.
Replacing words with synonyms can help you make your paraphrased content unique and improve the article’s language. However, you should not only replace a few words and expect that the entire content is paraphrased. It could help if you modify a lot of words, especially verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.
That’s how you can bring uniqueness, and no plagiarism checker can detect plagiarism in the text. Moreover, using this method, you can also get good grades on your assignments.
Use Online Paraphrasing Tools
Here is the last and the best trick for paraphrasing. If you lack confidence in your paraphrasing skills or are running short on time, leave the task on a paraphrasing tool. In this digital age, you have a lot of online utilities that can help you in every work, and paraphrasing tools are one of them.
A sentence changer can assist you in making your assignments unique,
error-free, and consistent. Therefore, trust advanced essay rewriters whenever you need to paraphrase anything. They will immediately do the task, and you will be surprised by the quality of the results.
Moreover, you can get the results of your choice, as most paraphrasers allow users to select the paraphrasing mode and produce results accordingly.