Paraphrasing Strategies: Paraphrasing Example

Last updated 5/6/2020

 

Visual: Screen opens to a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The title Walden University Writing Center and tagline “Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears on the screen. The screen changes to show the series title "Paraphrasing Strategies" and the video title "Paraphrasing Examples.”

Audio: Guitar music.

 

Visual: The image rotates to a new slide that is blue and brown. The heading states "Paraphrasing: Example." Below that is a text box which reads: "While educations and learners in classroom-based courses have already discovered the benefits of an engaged learning approach to education, the power of engagement in online courses is yet to be fully realized.  We define engaged learning as a collaborative learning process in which the instructor and learner are partners in building the knowledge base.  The use of online interactive tools such as asynchronous discussion boards and synchronous chats by educations initially began about twenty years ago.” (Conrad & Donaldson, 2011, vii)

Audio:  Let’s look an example of paraphrasing to illustrate what we’re aiming for when we are paraphrasing. This passage on the left is a passage from an original source, Conrad and Donaldson in 2011. [Reading the slide:] "While educators and learners in classroom-based courses have already discovered the benefits of an engaged learning approach to education, the power of engagement in online courses is yet to be fully realized. We define engaged learning as a collaborative learning process in which the instructor and learner are partners in building the knowledge base. The use of online interactive tools such as asynchronous discussion boards and synchronous chats by educators initially began about twenty years ago."

 

Visual: Additional text is added below and to the right of the existing text on the slide. Now, to the right of the text quoted above, there is a small box which reads "Original passage from source." Below there are two boxes.  The box to the left reads: "My Paper’s thesis" and the box to the right reads: "At anonymous University, a stronger focus on student engagement will improve the effectiveness of online courses."

Audio:  Our first step when paraphrasing is to look at this passage from Conrad and Donaldson and make sure we thoroughly understand it. We can’t move forward with our next step until we fully understand what the original author was saying. Then, we’re going to think about our purpose in using this passage in our own writing. Let’s say my paper's thesis is going to be this statement. [Reading the slide:] "At anonymous University, a stronger focus on student engagement will improve the effectiveness of online courses."  This thesis gives me my purpose in my writing, since the goal of my writing is to support and prove my argument as represented in this thesis statement. Now what am I going to do? I'm going to look for information that supports this thesis in the original source. Part of the passage says, "the power of engagement in online classes is yet to be fully realized."

 

Visual: The line quoted above is underlined in the sample text and a small text box pops up to the right hand side of the lengthy quote that says "Information that supports thesis."

Audio: This part of the passage supports the idea that a stronger focus on student engagement will improve the effectiveness of these online courses. So, our next step is to take this portion of the passage from Conrad and Donaldson and put it in our own voice, paraphrasing it using our own words and sentence structure.

 

Visual: Slide changes to another light blue and brown slide with a title that also reads "Paraphrasing: Example."  Below that is box that reads as follows: The power of engagement in online courses is yet to be fully realized (Conrad & Donaldson, 2011, vii). There is a line connecting another small text box to this quote, and that small text box reads "Original passage from source."

Below this is another textbook with a sample paraphrase provided that reads: "As Conrad and Donaldson (2011) noted, no one has perfected online education, but a focus on increased student engagement can improve student experience and effectiveness for online classes." A smaller text box is connected to this paraphrase with a line and it reads "Paraphrase."

Audio: When I do that, I might end up with a paraphrase as follows. [Reading from the slide:] "As Conrad and Donaldson, 2011, noted no one has perfected online education, but a focus on increased student engagement can improve student experience and effectiveness of online classes." Here we’ve taken that portion of the original passage and restated it to support our purpose in our writing, the argument we’re making via our thesis statement. As we’ve paraphrased the original passage, we’ve put the ideas Conrad and Donaldson presented and put them in our own voice—this is clear through the unique word choice and sentence structure we use. And thus, we end up with a successful paraphrase.

 

Visual: The screen changes to an ending slide with slide a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The email address writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu appears on the screen.