Paraphrasing Activity

by Fulya İçöz Narlı |

This lesson provides an opportunity for the students to use paraphrasing as a writing skill and later integrating this skill into their essay writing. 

Resource Type: Activities

Audience: Adult, University

Audience Language Proficiency: Advanced

Duration: 60 mins

Materials And Technology:

Objective:

The lesson aims to enable students to

  1. To demonstrate understanding of writing as a process by using the following strategies:
    • pre-writing
    • drafting
    • revising
    • editing
    • proofreading

   2. To demonstrate an understanding of paraphrasing skills to avoid plagiarism

Outcome:

At the end of the lesson students will be able to paraphrase a written / visual / audio text according to APA citation.

Activity Description:

Procedure:

01. Prepare (10 minutes)

Initiate a discussion with students revising their summarizing and direct quoting skills. Introduce paraphrasing as a concept. Watch a video and make students take notes.

02.Guided practice (20 minutes)

Group students in 2’s or 3’s and show them an original text and a paraphrased version of it.

Instructor asks each group about what parts of the original texts have been changed.

Example questions:

“Focus on the vocabulary. Which words have been changed? What alternatives can you find?”

“Focus on the grammar. How have the sentences in the paraphrased version changed? How would you change them?”

Instructor demonstrates some of the examples from the paraphrased version in plenary ( changes in vocab, organization, rules according to APA citation etc.)

03. Practice ( 25-30 minutes)

Students first see original samples from Adichie’s speech ( a text they have studied before. A new text can also be provided but it should not be too difficult to paraphrase yet). They start paraphrasing on sentence level.

Later students share their paraphrases on Padlet and get feedback from the instructor.

Students then paraphrase a paragraph from Kindra Cherry’s “How People’s Prejudices Develop” ( a text they have studied before. A new text can also be provided but it should not be too difficult to paraphrase yet).

04. Closure (15 minutes)

Provide students with a checklist and engage them in a peer review of their paraphrases.

Supporting Files:
Paraphrasing Activity.pdf

TESOL Interest Section: English as a Foreign Language, English for Specific Purposes, Higher Education, Materials Writers, Second Langauge Writing

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