Matters of Style

Using your own words

When summarising, it is important to avoid using whole sentences and vocabulary from the original passage. Use alternative expressions, grammatical forms, and sentence structures as much as possible (excluding technical terms, of course).

For techniques on rephrasing, click HERE to access a resource on ELE online (www.library.auckland.ac.nz/ele) called 'In other words:first steps to paraphrasing'. You can practise alternative ways of rephrasing ideas by using appropriate synonyms, grammatical forms and sentence structures.

Organisational structure

It is not always essential to change the organisational structure. The decision will depend on the type and structure of the original text. If you are summarising a newspaper article, a different organisational structure is preferable, because the conventions of newspaper reporting are different from academic prose writing.