It is also important to raise awareness of the problem among teachers. It is important for the student that the teaching team communicates the same message in the field of plagiarism. Attention in discussion teams and information can help with this. You can also use paraphrasing or professional dissertation editing services for getting new content.
What is Paraphrasing?
The definition of paraphrasing is to express someone else’s idea in your own words. The goal is to preserve the meaning of the original text without copying quoting) the text verbatim.
In general, you will paraphrase rather than quote in your thesis. This has the following three reasons:
- With a paraphrase you show that you understand the content of the text well.
- When paraphrasing, you are not copying research from others and you are not committing plagiarism (provided you include a correct source reference).
- Your own voice remains dominant in your thesis.
| Paraphrasing in six steps | |
| Step 1 | Read the passage carefully so that you fully understand it. |
| Step 2 | Write down the most important concepts. |
| Step 3 | Write your version of the text without looking at the original. |
| Step 4 | Compare your own version of the text with the original version. Pay attention to parts that are still too much in the same words. |
| Step 5 | Make minor adjustments where necessary. Sometimes it is not possible to change all sentences. |
| Step 6 | Make a note of the source from which the passage originates, including all the information you need to correctly cite the source (author name, book title, journal or article, year of publication, etc.). |
Four tips for paraphrasing
The six steps may seem easy to perform, but it can be difficult to determine where to start if you want to formulate an idea in a different way. There are some tricks you can apply. In this article we describe four of them. Note: you do not always have to apply all four tips.
1. Change the order of the information
In the example, the information is displayed in a different order. The original quote first describes a cause (sharing economic interests), then an effect (fear), and then a relationship between cause and effect (the greater the dependence, the greater the fear).
The paraphrase, on the other hand, starts with an effect (risk of conflict), then the cause (growing economic dependence) is discussed and finally three possible variants of the effect are described.
2. Use synonyms as much as possible
While certain parts of the original quote cannot be changed, for example because no suitable synonyms exist (for example, “economic” or “interests”), you can always replace multiple words or phrases with synonyms.
3. Change the sentence structure
For example, if the original sentence was written in active (active) form, you can convert it to passive form (or vice versa).
4. Spread the information among individual sentences
While paraphrasing usually results in roughly the same word count as a literal quote, you can adjust the number of sentences to change the text.
