HCS507 Understand And Paraphrase A Challenging Text For Paper Focus

Answer:

Introduction

Paraphrasing means rewriting a text in one’s own words.  Tutors wants to see students use their own word in writing since it shows their level of understanding about a particular subject or unit. Various academic reading texts are coined from paraphrased content. Any of the information in a particular paragraph which do have quotation marks or references is either a summary or a paraphrase. Mainly, students undergoes difficulties in writing acceptable paraphrases.  Brown and Smith, (in their study of students writing difficulties) found out that the most popular error made by student in paraphrasing is that they just changed few words by the original writer (Brun, 2013). It was also noted that the practice was a specific problem with users of the internet who copy-pasted contented from websites. Even where a paraphrased text is supported by references, it is not right where the sentences and words are matching the writer’s words.  There people who are no perfect in paraphrasing might experience difficulties in avoiding plagiarism.  Successful paraphrasing techniques can be fast adopted if a person is familiar with a number of strategies. A step by step approach can be applied where the order of very step is intuitive. For an effective paraphrasing the following steps should be followed one after the other:

1. Reread the original text meant for paraphrasing, pointing out unfamiliar words until there is a fair understanding of the meaning and intention of the words by the original author (Androutsopoulos, 2010).
2. Put away the original passage and draft the author’s concept in one’s own words like it is being narrated or explained to a different audience.
3. On completion of the writing compare it against the Author’s Idea while counterchecking using questions such as;

• Is there an accurate to the author’s ideas in another way which is dissimilar to the original passage?
• Is here an attempt to replicate the concept of the author or is it just a changes of words from his or her original sentences.

4. Lastly, a citation should be included showing name of the author, year and paragraph or age number from the paraphrase directly.

Paraphrasing Methods

• Hide the original text and start writing

Go through the targeted passage many times until it is fully understood and use new words to restate in to a different person (Landau, et al. 2012). Then the original should be put away and the passage rewritten in reader’s own words.

• Take notes

Make abbreviated notes, keep the notes and paraphrase from the notes latter, maybe a after a day.

In case it is not possible to apply any of the two methods, therefore one should realize that the passage has not been understood correctly. In such case a person might require to apply a more structured approach until he or she more experienced in paraphrasing (Berant, et al2014).

 How to Understand and Paraphrase a Challenging Text

1. Change the structure

First start at a different place in the text and sentences, ensuring that the choice is based on the paper’s focus.  This will automatically lead to transformation in the wording. Focusing on certain characters instead of abstractions will make the paraphrase good for reading. At this point, long sentences can be broken while combining short ones and expanding phrases for conciseness. Phrases can also be shortened for clarity or it can be done in an extra step. Through the process, there will be an automatic elimination of some words while altering others. After this step, one might have succeeded in changing the structure and still the text has several direct quotations. Therefore the second step is inevitable.

2. Change the words

Apply a phrase or a synonym that has the same meaning as the replaced word. Shared language should be left unchanged. It is critical to begin by changing the structure and not the words. It is likely that as the words are being changed, an opportunity to change the structure further. To create a satisfactory paraphrase it is recommendable go through the process over and over again.

When paraphrasing the following points must be kept in mind:

• Provide references
• He paraphrase must in unique words. There should be more than just substituting phrases. There must also be a creation of different sentence structures.

It might be challenging to get new words for ideas which are already well expressed.  Hence changing of words should not be the main objective. One should rather focus on filtering the ideas through personal understanding. This strategy will even simplify the work of paraphrasing further.

1. At the point of taking notes, and there is available passage that seems suitable for the essay, its verbatim should not be copied unless if it will be quoted.
2. If there is a notion that the passage needs paraphrasing, author’s basic points should be noted. There no need for using full sentences.
3. In the notes taken, the language should be already changed to differ from the original words of the text. The major goal is to capture the key concept of the author.
4. Ensure that the sources are jotted down with the page numbers indicated to be able to make a proper reference later.

On time of drafting down the essay, one should depends on the notes instead of the original work anymore (Landau, et al. 2012). It will be easy to keep off from borrowing from the author’s work since there will be recent review of the passage. The following simple sequence must be complied with:

1. Change the notes to complete sentences.
2. Provide correct references
3. Revisit the original passage to make sure your paraphrase is accurate and words are put in a different unique way

Conclusion

Explicitly refer to work of the author in the paraphrase. Analyze the work but do not only paraphrase. The new essay is supposed to not only reiterate points but also lay out structure of the argument. There is no need to include all details of the original passage to paraphrase. It is not necessary to change each word in the original text. Essential terms should remain same to maintain clarity of the work. Nevertheless, a person should keep off from copying complete phrases. They can only be borrowed in case they are part of the discourse of the field.

References

Callison-Burch, C., Cohn, T., & Lapata, M. (2008, August). Parametric: An automatic evaluation metric for paraphrasing. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics-Volume 1 (pp. 97-104). Association for Computational Linguistics.

Kauchak, D., & Barzilay, R. (2016, June). Paraphrasing for automatic evaluation. In Proceedings of the main conference on Human Language Technology Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association of Computational Linguistics (pp. 455-462). Association for Computational Linguistics.

Androutsopoulos, I., & Malakasiotis, P. (2010). A survey of paraphrasing and textual entailment methods. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 38, 135-187.

Berant, J., & Liang, P. (2014). Semantic parsing via paraphrasing. In Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (Vol. 1, pp. 1415-1425).

Brun, C., & Hagege, C. (2013, July). Normalization and paraphrasing using symbolic methods. In Proceedings of the second international workshop on Paraphrasing-Volume 16 (pp. 41-48). Association for Computational Linguistics.

Madnani, N., & Dorr, B. J. (2010). Generating phrasal and sentential paraphrases: A survey of data-driven methods. Computational Linguistics, 36(3), 341-387.

White, B. F., Bretan, I. P., & Sanamrad, M. A. (2013). U.S. Patent No. 5,237,502. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Landau, J. D., Druen, P. B., & Arcuri, J. A. (2012). Methods for helping students avoid plagiarism. Teaching of Psychology, 29(2), 112-115.