The Art of Paraphrasing: Avoiding Plagiarism

hi everybody this is Isabel Mae from the ume Writing Center in today's video I'm going to take you through what I call the art of paraphrasing some tips and tricks to properly paraphrase original source material be those websites journal articles passages from any of those book chapters and so on this is a really important skill to develop in order to avoid plagiarism I've seen a lot of writers over the years get into trouble because they've taken certain passages that they really like that said exactly what they thought needed to be said in their paper and they didn't sufficiently paraphrase and what I mean by that is that they only change the word here or there they might have even cited it attributed to the original source but they didn't change the original phrasing enough for it to become really their own writing and they can get people into trouble so to avoid that here are some tips and tricks on how to properly paraphrase and I'm going to take you through an example to show you what to do when you have a phrase that's a little bit too close to the original how you can fix that so let's get started there are seven steps for successful paraphrasing and I we walk you through these and then demonstrate them on an example a step number one is to read the original a few times so if you have a particular passage a paragraph from an article that you want to paraphrase and use in your work read the original a few times so you become really familiar with the content once you've done that put the original passage away don't even look at it really crucial step so once you've done that take a piece of paper on your computer write down the main ideas from memory not looking at the original and not touching the original right now so writing down from memory some notes on the content number four now you're ready to actually write write your paraphrase one little tip is to rearrange to the successful paraphrase is to rearrange the ideas as presented the original in a different order in your paraphrase so start maybe with the idea that's expressed in the last sentence of that passage and start off with that that automatically gets you into a different flow of the narrative of the argument and you have a higher chance of avoiding saying the same thing in the same way in the original step number five once you've written your paraphrase now it's time to pull out the original again and make sure you check your paraphrase with the original if you noticing and step number six if you're noticing any phrases that are identical to the phrases from the original either rephrase them or put quotation marks around them it's not enough to just sign it you have to also put quotation marks around any originally any phrasing it comes from the original source and then step number seven last but not least you always need to make sure you cite your source according to the citation style you're required to use it for most of you that will be APA which stands for the American Psychological associations style manual most likely to sixth edition which is the last edition so let's look at an example here's an original from a Consumer Reports article and bike helmets of the more than 1000 bicycling deaths each year three-fourths are caused by head injuries half of those killed or school-aged children one study concluded that wearing a bike helmet can reduce the risk of head injury by 85 percent in an accident a bike helmet absorbs the shock concussions the head so I would read over this a few times until I'm very familiar with the content then it's time to take some notes I remember something about buy helmets causing fatal injuries wearing a helmet lessens the chance of a head injury the helmet cushions the head when falling of all of these deaths caused by bike accident about 75 percent happening to children and then half of those being happen because of head injuries and half of those deaths of children so those are some of the main ideas I remembered from reading my original I still putting it aside here's my attempt for my paraphrase bike helmets can help reduce potentially fatal bike accidents 3/4 of biking accidents are caused by head injuries of which 50% in both children helmet protects the head of a cyclist during an accident by reducing the impact on the head based on one study the injury rate goes down dramatically name the 85% when riders wear helmets so let me look compare this to the original son looking at the first sentence there's nothing really and their original which is in the bottom here that looks familiar the same I look at the second sentence 3/4 of biking accidents are caused by head injuries and this is where I'm noticing if we force a caused by head injuries so that sentence is almost verbatim from the original I've added the little phrase of biking accidents in my original in my paraphrase but the original sentences three-fourths are caused by head injuries so now I have two options here I can either rephrase it further or I use direct quotations before we go to either doing one on one or the other the other crucial thing that's missing here in my paraphrase the citation I have to put the citation the in-text citation in my paraphrase so let me look at their rephrasing here so I'm going the route of quoting so I put quotation marks around 3/4 of biking accidents are caused by head injuries of which 50% involve children so to continue my sentence there at the end of the sentence I will start my citation I don't have an author year so I'm going to use the title bike helmets comma 1990 comma very important here page 348 since I am using a direct quote I have to put the page number in here two things to point out you notice those square brackets around of biking accidents that's because the phrase of biking accidents was added by me in my quotation to make it flow better with my previous sentence where I mentioned the term biking accidents but it's on the original so if I want to keep this as the original phrasing to indicate to my reader that I'm adding something here I'm using the square brackets to indicate okay it's number one the other thing I want to point out to you is that look at where the parenthetical citation is located it didn't put it right after the quote I put it at the end of the sentence this sentence starts off with the direct quotation but ends in my own writing and the citation for the source from Webb taking this quotation needs to always come at the end of the sentence no matter where the direct quotation is last but not least make sure you notice here that at the end of my paraphrase I repeat the main parenthetical citation this time only the author or in this case the name of the article and the and the year of the publication by then I'm indicating to my reader that I'm continuing to draw from the source in this particular paraphrase so if I wanted to not use direct quotations I would paraphrase three force off by accidents are caused by head injuries so the way I did that in the second sentence you see on the top I'm saying head injuries accounted for 75% of biking accidents with deadly outcomes of which 50% involve children it's a little longer little worthier I've changed 3/4 to 75% I made head injuries the subject here rather than the number by making it you know into it into a slightly differently structured differently structured sentence and here I also changed my in-text citations a little bit actually edit the in-text the first in-text citation after my first sentence indicating to my reader here I'm starting off with a direct citation and then again at the end of the of the paraphrase I again repeat the citation just to make sure that my video understands hey I'm citing from this particular source so whatever you do with the original your paraphrase or all of it or just parts you using you know using quotations make sure you always cite the original source most issues of plagiarism I find happen because of two things not sufficiently paraphrase language seen here and not sight it and sometimes a combination of both which is deadly so again paraphrase as much as possible if you're quoting directly integrated just like we did here integrate the quote into your sentence structure and then make sure you cite the original source

Channel: University of Maryland, Baltimore Writing Center

Views: 190,776

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Id: H1qo10dG5Gw

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2017