One of the adjustments I had to make when stepping into the world of teacher librarianship was my understanding of paraphrasing. During my schooling and first couple of uni degrees, I was operating under the assumption that paraphrasing was changing someone else’s writing to not be word-for-word when using it in my writing. How wrong I was!

I learnt very early on that this belief about paraphrasing would technically ensure that I was not plagiarising, but it wouldn’t develop my writing skills. I didn’t truly come to terms with this until I started my Research Master’s and then the PhD. Now that I read and write academic literature almost daily (yes, I really do, and it’s entirely thanks to my new reMarkable, but more on that later), I can finally see what I was trying to grasp before. I think the term “paraphrasing” is misleading and have found myself gravitating towards calling it “synthesising,” but for this to make sense, I think it’s important to start at the beginning.

So, what is paraphrasing?

The short answer is:

There are different ways to paraphrase. The most commonly used/taught way is to swap out words and change the structure or even the tense to avoid word-for-word copying. This is mostly concerned with avoiding plagiarism. The way that I am hoping to guide students is less about avoiding plagiarism and more about taking the essence of the literature and combining it with other sources to provide a new point of view on the information. This approach moves beyond paraphrasing for academic integrity and into creating new ways of looking at information (with avoiding plagiarism as a bonus, not the main goal).

And now the longer answer:

As I’m sure you know, paraphrasing is often traditionally thought of as the act of rephrasing words by someone else into your own words and is largely viewed as a way to avoid plagiarism (Penaluna & Ross, 2022, p. 404; Rossi, 2022, p. 414). While this is a benefit of paraphrasing, its true purpose is to allow you to demonstrate your ability to discuss the essence of the literature you cite  (Rossi, 2022, p. 413). What I mean is that paraphrasing allows you an opportunity to demonstrate your skills in concluding, highlighting important information, or even clarifying what you paraphrased to show your deep understanding.

Therefore, in terms of the true definition of paraphrasing, I would like to propose the following:

Great paraphrasing goes beyond the skill of knowledge telling and moves into the realm of knowledge transformation. This means that instead of rewriting the knowledge to tell it in a different way, the goal should be to transform knowledge by adding meaning and building on the conversation (Rosenberg, 1987, pp. 143-146; Rossi, 2022, p. 413). Knowledge transformation is a strategy used to rearrange knowledge by selecting specific information, combining it with other sources, and organising it into a new point of view or clarification (Spivey, 1990, p. 257). This practice allows writers to avoid plagiarism and present evidence of their thinking and understanding, but more importantly, it also serves a higher purpose in academic writing: true paraphrasing develops the writer’s voice and positions them to go beyond simply repeating knowledge to contributing knowledge.

Let’s call it synthesising instead

I am hoping that my explanation of this skill has got you thinking about how to change your view of what paraphrasing is. If we are to think about it from a “regurgitation” perspective, then yes, it is about ensuring you do not use the exact words in the same sequence as the original author. However, this doesn’t show what you know! Your powerful contribution comes in the way that you can synthesise different perspectives together to form your own view. This is what I often refer to as your author voice and use evidence to support your thinking.

This is not an easy thing to do! It has taken me many years and being fully immersed in the world of academia to truly come to grips with how to transform knowledge and contribute to the discussion – and I’m nowhere near perfect at it. I’m still learning, but I’m enjoying the challenge and I know that I am a better writer for it.

So, what do you think? Does my definition of paraphrasing ring true with you? Would you call it something else, or have you never heard of this approach before? I’d love to know!

The references I have used throughout this post have some great suggestions for improving paraphrasing as a skill. I have been using these to inform my own practice as a writer but also in the way I talk about and teach about paraphrasing. I hope you find them useful! (Especially: Penaluna & Ross, 2022; Rossi, 2022 – these are chapters from the same book with lots of great information, activities, and more.)

References

Penaluna, L., & Ross, R. (2022). How to talk about academic integrity so students will listen: Addressing ethical decision-making using scenarios. In S. E. Eaton & J. Christensen Hughes (Eds.), Academic Integrity in Canada: An Enduring and Essential Challenge (pp. 393–410). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83255-1

Rosenberg, S. (1987). Advances in applied psycholinguistics: Reading, writing, and language learning (Vol. 2). Cambridge University Press.

Rossi, S. (2022). Revisioning paraphrasing instruction. In S. E. Eaton & J. Christensen Hughes (Eds.), Academic Integrity in Canada: An Enduring and Essential Challenge (pp. 411–429). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83255-1

Spivey, N. N. (1990). Transforming texts: Constructive processes in reading and writing. Written Communication, 7(2), 256–287. https://doi-org/10.1177/0741088390007002004

*Note: This blog post has been proofread by Grammarly. I use this tool to check for grammatical and spelling errors. I do not use it to generate content.

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