Welcome back. Today I'm going to teach you one of
the most important skills that you need to know if you want to write in school in English it's
paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is one of the most important but also the most difficult skills
especially for English learners. In today's video I'm going to talk about what is paraphrasing, why
is paraphrasing important, and then I'll show you two ways to paraphrase. First, what is
paraphrasing? Paraphrasing is when we repeat what someone else said or wrote using our
own words. Actually we paraphrase all the time, for example, if you are in class and your friend
comes to class late, maybe your friend will say “What was the professor talking about?” you repeat
what the professor said using your own words that's paraphrasing. It's easy to paraphrase
in your own language, but it's really hard to paraphrase in a second language because it
requires good control of vocabulary and grammar. Next why is paraphrasing important? Why
do we need to know how to paraphrase? Paraphrasing is important because we are required
to use it all the time in school for example, if your professor asks you to read a book and
write about it you're going to want to repeat some of the ideas from the book, but you're not really
allowed to just copy the words from the book. Instead you need to repeat the ideas from the
book by using your own words, that's paraphrasing. Another example is if you read something
and answer questions based on what you read, teachers usually don't want you to just copy
the words in your answer, instead the teachers will ask you to paraphrase or use your own words
to repeat those ideas. If you go to college in the U.S., you will be expected to paraphrase
when you do your homework and write essays. In my class I teach my students two
ways to paraphrase. The first one is shorter and the second one is longer, so
the first way is called “Tell your friend.” First, you're going to read the paragraph over
and over until you understand it 100 percent, this can take some time but it's a necessary step
so don't skip it. Then put the paragraph away and think about the ideas in the paragraph.
What was the writer trying to say? Third, imagine that you need to
tell your friend what you just read, so you're going to say those ideas in your own
words without looking at the paragraph. You don't have to repeat every small detail, but you want
to be sure to repeat the important ideas. Let's practice with this paragraph about California.
“California is a large state on the west coast of the United States. It is important for two main
reasons. First, it has the largest population in the U.S. with 39.5 million people. It also has
one of the largest economies in the world. This combination of large population and large economy
make California a powerful state in the U.S. Second, California has long been a strong
influence in terms of popular culture. Many actors and film producers live in California, but
also some of the most important people in fashion, technology, sports, and music live and work there,
and their contributions affect the lives of people around the world.” So first we need to understand
the ideas of the paragraph, so let's read it again and think about what the important ideas are.
We're going to notice that the first idea is an introduction to California, it's a large state
and it's located on the west coast of the U.S., and then the rest of the paragraph will talk about
why the state is important, there are two reasons, okay, the first reason is that the state
has a large population and a large economy, and those two things together make California
powerful, the second reason is that California has a strong influence on popular culture.
Why? Because there are a lot of actors and people in fashion and technology and sports who
live in California and the things that they make affect the lives of people around the world
or affect popular culture around the world . Now let's try to repeat those ideas in our own
words. For example, we might say, “California is a big state in the western United States.
California is an important state for two reasons. First, it's important because of its size. It
has almost 40 million people, more than any other state in the U.S. It also has a huge economy,
and the big number of people and big economy make California very powerful. The second reason
is that California influences popular culture. People who make movies and technology
fashion and who play sports live there, and their work has a big effect on people
around the world or people all over the world.” The second way to paraphrase takes longer but
it's really helpful, especially if you have to paraphrase something difficult. It's called the
Grammar Toolkit. The idea here is that you use different grammar tools to make changes to the
sentence, and if you use enough tools, well then the sentence becomes your own words. Let's
see an example. “When acquiring a second language, you should pay attention to differences
between your first language and the new language. Here's my paraphrase: “When you learn a
second language, you should notice how your first and second languages are different.” So what
did I do? First, I used synonyms or words that have similar meanings, I changed “acquire” to
“learn,” “pay attention” to “notice,” and “new language” to “second language.” Then I looked
for other changes in grammar that I could make. I changed that first phrase “when acquiring”
to “when you learn” and I changed “differences between the first language and new
language” to “how your first and second languages are different.” Notice that
the paraphrase has exactly the same meaning as the original, but the grammar and words
are different, so the paraphrase is good. Let's look at these five grammar tools one by
one. Number one: synonyms. Synonyms are words that have similar meanings, and we always want
to use synonyms when we paraphrase, but we have to be careful because if we overuse synonyms, or
if we just start plugging in a lot of synonyms in our paraphrase, the paraphrase sometimes sounds
strange, so we need to choose synonyms carefully. Let's see an example: “Due to climate change,
fires in California have become more dangerous” Here's my paraphrase: “Because of climate
change, blazes in California have been more hazardous.” Which sentence do you prefer? Probably
the first one, right? That's because I overuse synonyms in my paraphrase and some of the synonyms
don't sound very good. We want to use synonyms but we need to be careful to choose them well. Also,
notice that I did not change ‘climate change.’ Why? Because ‘climate change’ is a specific term
and there isn't really a good synonym for that. If I change it to ‘changes in the weather,’
it doesn't really have the same meaning. Tool number two: move parts of the sentence. Many long
sentences in English have parts that you can move, and this is an easy way to make your paraphrase
better, for example “Due to climate change, fires in California have become more dangerous,’ so we
have an introductory phrase here that we can move: ‘Fires in California have become more
dangerous due to climate change.’ Now if we want to make our paraphrase better,
we're going to use a couple of synonyms: ‘Fires in California have become increasingly
serious because of climate change.’ Notice here that I used ‘increasingly serious’ and
‘because of’ and those are good synonyms. Tool number three: change the parts of speech.
Parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and this is a tricky one but in some sentences
it works really well. Remember my example about learning languages? Let's see it again: ‘When
acquiring a second language, you need to pay attention to the differences between your first
language and the new language.’ Now listen to my paraphrase: ‘When you learn a second language, you
should notice how the first language and second languages are different.’ This is an example of
changing the parts of speech because I changed the words ‘differences’ to ‘different.’ Of course
you have to be careful to make other changes in grammar that are necessary for the sentence to
have correct structure. Let's see another one: ‘Researchers have found that one key to
happiness is relaxation.’ Here's my paraphrase: ‘Researchers have found that one key to being
happy is to relax.’ So here I changed ‘happiness’ to ‘being happy.’ ‘Happy’ as an adjective, and I
changed ‘relaxation’ to the verb ‘to relax.’ Let's see one more: ‘Due to climate change, fires
in California have become more dangerous.’ Here I'm going to change ‘dangerous’ to ‘a
greater danger’: ‘Due to climate change, fires in California have become a greater danger.’
So again I changed the adjective ‘dangerous’ to the noun ‘danger’ and we don't say ‘more
danger,’ so I changed ‘more dangerous’ to ‘a greater danger.’ Number four: change
affirmative to negative or vice versa, so here you're going to look for words that you
can change by using a negative. Here's an example: ‘The frustrated voters waited in line for several
hours.’ So think about the word ‘frustrated.’ What does frustrated mean? It means not happy,
right? or not satisfied, so I can change ‘frustrated’ to ‘unsatisfied’ here
I'm using the negative prefix un. ‘The frustrated voters waited in line for several
hours’ ‘The unsatisfied voters waited in line for several hours.’ And the last one, number five:
combine. When we have a paragraph, we can take some of those sentences and combine them to make
our paraphrase better. Let's see an example: ‘Due to climate change, fires in California
have become more dangerous. The governor has promised to work harder to combat climate
change as the state moves toward clean energy.’ So here we have two sentences and we can
combine them together: ‘Due to climate change, fires in California have become more dangerous,
but as the state moves toward clean energy, the governor has promised to work harder to combat
climate change.’ Now we're not finished. The paraphrase is basically the same as the original,
it's just that we combined those sentences together and moved one thing, we're going to have
to use some synonyms and maybe other changes to make the paraphrase good. When you use the Grammar
Toolkit, there are other changes you might make too, for example, change from active to passive
or from singular to plural, and as your English gets better and you have more control of grammar
and vocabulary, it will be easier for you to see what changes to make, but the most important thing
is that you make enough changes that the sentence becomes your own writing. The meaning must stay
the same, but it also must be in your own words. What's important to remember here is that when
you paraphrase, you need to use more than one tool from the Grammar Toolkit. Think of it this
way: when you need to fix something that's broken, you probably don't use only one tool, for example,
if your refrigerator is broken and you bring your tool kit, how many tools are you going to use? If
you use only one tool, you probably cannot get the job done, the same thing with paraphrasing, you
need to use more than one tool to make a good paraphrase. That's it for today, check out the
description box below for more practice and let me know if you have any questions or suggestions
for topics for upcoming videos. Thanks so much, and if you found this video helpful please
subscribe and give it a like. See you soon!
