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Test yourself
Test yourself!
How many different ways can you express the meaning contained in the following sentence?
| The school had no alternative but to close during the flood. |
[Show techniques and explanation]
What is an acceptable paraphrase?
The challenge in paraphrasing is to produce a restatement of the ideas in the original text without using the same grammatical forms, sentence structure, words and whole phrases. Technical words can be retained, but the paraphrase should not be too similar to the original in terms of structure, phrasing and word use. You must, therefore, use a combination of techniques, and paraphrase at all levels: word, sentence and text.
Read the following text and the three student paraphrases below it:
Original text Studies using stressed medical students as guinea pigs have found the higher the academic success, history of stressful life events and loneliness, the lower the level of "natural killer" cells and other measures of cellular immunity. Text source: Laugesen, R. (2011). Stressed to excess. The Listener, July 16-22, p.19 |
Three paraphrases
 Adam | In other words, medical students have lower natural immunity than other students. |
| Kate | Research using students studying medicine as experiments has discovered that when academic achievement is high, and there is a history of stressful life experiences and feelings of loneliness, the level of "natural killer" cells and other immunity measures in the body is lower (Laugesen, 2011). |
| Alison | In a study, low levels of natural immunity in medical students were found to be related to high levels of stress from the pressures of having to succeed academically, and feelings of being isolated (Laugesen, 2011). |
Check the acceptability of the three paraphrases against the criteria on the left by clicking on Yes or No for each criterion. Click on COMMENT to read the final assessment.
| Criteria for acceptable paraphrasing | Paraphrase 1 -Adam | Paraphrase 2 -Kate | Paraphrase 3 -Alison |
| 1. Keeps the same meaning as the original. | Yes No | Yes No | Yes No |
| 2. Changes most of the words. | Yes No | Yes No | Yes No |
| 3. Uses different grammatical forms. | Yes No | Yes No | Yes No |
| 4. Changes the sentence structure. | Yes No | Yes No | Yes No |
| 5. Cites the source/Gives citation details. | Yes No | Yes No | Yes No |
| COMMENT | COMMENT | COMMENT |
