LESSON 3: PARAPHRASING AND SUMMARIZING

Lesson objectives
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
 use various techniques in summarizing a variety of texts;
 summarize the content of an academic text;
 paraphrase a statement or paragraph; and
 write a précis/abstract/summary of texts in the various disciplines.

Motivational Activity

Try to change the sample quote below into your own version. Remember to retain
the ideas so that you won’t change the thought of the sample quotation.

Sample quote: A hurricane is a giant spinning storm.

Your version: ________________________________________________________.

Processing Activity

Answer the given question briefly:

1. Do you find the activity easy? Or difficult? Why do you say so?
I find it __________________________________________________________

2. What are your steps in creating your own structure of quote based from the given
quotation?
The steps I followed _______________________________________________

3. What do you think is/are the reason/s for creating your own version of a sentence or
text?

Key Takeaways
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When you want to use specific materials from an argument to support a point you
are making in your paper but want to avoid too many quotes, you should paraphrase.

What is a paraphrase?

Paraphrases are generally as long, and sometimes longer, than the original text.
In a paraphrase, you use your own words to explain the specific points another writer
has made. If the original text refers to an idea or term discussed earlier in the text, your
paraphrase may also need to explain or define that idea. You may also need to interpret
specific terms made by the writer in the original text.
Be careful not to add information or commentary that isn’t part of the original
passage in the midst of your paraphrase. You don’t want to add to or take away from
the meaning of the passage you are paraphrasing. Save your comments and analysis
until after you have finished your paraphrased and cited it appropriately.

What does paraphrasing look like?

Paraphrases should begin by making it clear that the information to come is from
your source. If you are using APA format, a year citation should follow your mention of
the author.
For example, using the Thoreau passage as an example, you might begin a
paraphrase like this:

Example: Even though Thoreau (1854) praised the virtues of the intellectual life, he did
not consider….

Paraphrases may sometimes include brief quotations, but most of the

paraphrase should be in your own words. What might a paraphrase of this passage
from Thoreau look like?

Sample Passage:
“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and
mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse
labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from
excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the
laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to
sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the
market.”

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Paraphrased passage:

In his text, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau (1854) points to
the incongruity of free men becoming enslaved and limited by constant labor and
worry. Using the metaphor of a fruit to represent the pleasures of a thoughtful
life, Thoreau suggests that men have become so traumatized by constant labor
that their hands—as representative of their minds—have become unable to pick
the fruits available to a less burdened life even when that fruit becomes available
to them.

Note that the passage above is almost exactly the same length as the original.
It’s also important to note that the paraphrased passage has a different structure and
significant changes in wording. The main ideas are the same, but the writer has
paraphrased effectively by putting the information into his own words.

What are the benefits of paraphrasing?

The paraphrase accomplishes three goals:

 Like the summary, it contextualizes the information (who said it, when, and
where).
 It restates all the supporting points used by Thoreau to develop the idea that man
is hurt by focusing too much on labor.
 The writer uses their own words for most of the paraphrase, allowing the writer to
maintain a strong voice while sharing important information form the source.

Paraphrasing is likely the most common way you will integrate your source
information. Quoting should be minimal in most research papers. Paraphrasing allows
you to integrate sources without losing your voice as a writer to those sources.
Paraphrasing can be tricky, however. You really have to make changes to the wording.
Changing a few words here and there doesn’t count as a paraphrase, and, if you don’t
quote those words, can get you into trouble with plagiarism.

Paraphrasing Structure
When you paraphrase, you have to do more than change the words from the
original passage.  You have to also change the sentence structure. Sometimes,
students will struggle with paraphrasing because they have an urge to simply use the
same basic sentence or sentences and replace the original words with synonyms. This
is not a method that works for effective paraphrasing.

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Let’s see what that looks like. Here’s an original quote from an article about a
new video game based on Thoreau’s famous work, Walden.

Original Passage
“The digital Walden Pond will showcase a first-person point-of-view where you
can wander through the lush New England foliage, stop to examine a bush and
pick some fruit, cast a fishing rod, return to a Spartan cabin modelled after
Thoreau’s and just roam around the woods, grappling with life’s unknowable
questions.”

Incorrect Paraphrasing
According to Hayden (2012), the Walden Pond game will offer a first-person view
in which the play can meander within the New England trees and wilderness,
pause to study foliage or grab some food, go fishing, return home to a small
cabin based on Thoreau’s cabin, and just venture around in the woods,
pondering important questions of life.

Explanation:
Here, you can see that the “paraphrase” follows the exact same structure as the
original passage. Even though the wording has been changed, this would be considered
a form of plagiarism by some because the sentence structure has been copied, taking
this beyond just sharing the ideas of the passage. Let’s take a look at a better
paraphrase of the passage.

Correct Paraphrasing
According to Hayden (2012), the upcoming video game Walden Pond is a first-
person game that simulates the life and experiences of Thoreau when he lived at
Walden Pond. Based upon Thoreau’s famous work, Walden, the game allows
players to experience life in the New England woods, providing opportunities for
players to fish, gather food, live in a cabin, and contemplate life, all within  a
digital world.

Explanation:
In this paraphrase, the writer has captured the main idea of the passage but
changed the sentence structure and the wording. The writer has added some context,
which is often helpful in a paraphrase, by providing some background for the game.

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Exercise 3.1

Paraphrase the following passages. Follow the guidelines in paraphrasing process.

Passage 1:
“Death rates for males are substantially higher than for females for every age group of
children and youth, but the largest difference occurs among teens, ages 15 to 19”
(Goutas, et al., 2011, p. 11).

Passage 2:
"In the more than a century and a half of their existence, Washington Irving's two most
famous stories, 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' have taken on a
life of their own. They have been read, listened to, and, from the time of Joseph
Jefferson's first staging of "Rip" to our own age of mass media, watched in various of
productions, by generations of adults and children alike. Yet relatively few people are
aware that they were once—and, for that matter, still technically are—part of of an
apparently miscellaneous, but actually quite coherent unified, collection of sketches,
essays, and stories called The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon" (Rubin-Dorsky 393).

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Passage 3:
"So dynamic is the Web that new technologies and techniques are emerging all the
time. What's commonplace one year becomes old hat the next. The only thing that
seems to remain constant is people's desire to transmit and receive information
efficiently and to communicate with others, no matter what the means. That's what
drives people to shop, invest, and converse online, and it is the same force that is
propelling them to learn online as well" (Ko & Rossen, 2008, p. 5).

Summarizing
One way to integrate your source information is through summary. Summaries
are generally used to restate the main ideas of a text in your own words. They are
usually substantially shorter than the original text because they don’t include supporting
material. Instead, they include overarching ideas of an article, a page, or a paragraph.

For example, in the first chapter of his 1854 book, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Henry
David Thoreau wrote the following:
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and
mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse
labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from
excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the
laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to
sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the
market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember
well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his
knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit

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him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature,
like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet
we do not treat ourselves or one another thus tenderly.

What is the main idea in the passage above? The following is one way the passage
might be summarized.
In his 1854 text, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau suggests
that the human fixation on work and labor desensitizes man to the world around
him, to the needs of his own intellectual growth, and to the complexity and frailty
of his fellow humans.

NOTE: The summary accomplishes two goals:

 It contextualizes the information (who said it, when, and where).
 It lists the main ideas of the passage without using quotations or citing specific
supporting points of the passage

Why is summarizing important?

Summarizing helps you understand and learn important information by reducing

information to its key ideas. Summaries can be used for annotation and study notes as
well as to expand the depth of your writing.

How is summarizing different

from paraphrasing?

To the untrained eye, a summary and a paraphrase may look alike. However,
there are differences.
 A summary is shorter than the original text.
 A paraphrase can be shorter or longer than the original.
 A summary eliminates details, examples, and supporting points.
 A paraphrase describes the original text in different words. It does not leave out
details.

To start with your next activity, take time to read and examine the given
guidelines of writing a summary.

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Write the summary

1. Begin your summary with statement of the thesis. Begin with an introductory
sentence that mentions the author, title, and thesis.

2. Write the main idea of each section in one well-developed sentence. Make sure
that what you include in your sentences are key points, not minor details.

3. Follow the order of ideas in the original text. After stating the thesis, you should
mention the first main idea that you come across and then major details that back it up.
Then you would mention the second main idea and so on.

4. The amount of detail you include, if any, depends on your purpose for writing
the summary.
- For example, if you are writing a summary of a magazine article for research paper, it
might be more detailed than if you were writing it to jog your memory for class
discussion.

5. Summary should be no more than ¼ the original text. It can be one sentence,
one paragraph or multiple paragraphs depending on the length of the original and your
purpose for writing the summary.

6. Do not include unnecessary or material that says the same thing as another
part of the passage.

7. Do not use phrasing such as “This article is about” or “In this paragraph the
author says …”

8. Do not plagiarize or bring in your personal opinion. Summarizing is about

restating what the author says. Save your own ideas for another time.

9. Make sure that your summary includes the meaning of the original passage
and does not change the author’s purpose or tone. Identify the main idea and
double check that your summary does not change or add to it.

10. Read and revise the content.

 Have you captured the main point of the article?
 Have you included the most important details?
o Make sure that you have included all the supporting details or mentioned
all of the events, however briefly.

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o Group these details as outlined previously; do not omit key information
that was in the original passage. o Check for an accurate topic sentence
and the five Ws and an H.

11. Read over your summary edit for grammatical and spelling errors.
 Is the verb tense consistent?
 Are all names spelled correctly and capitalized?
 Have you avoided writing run-on sentences and sentence fragments?
 Is there sentence variety?
 Have you avoided writing short, choppy sentences? Are there transitional words
and phrases to connect ideas?

Exercise 3.2

Summarize the given articles “Wrigley’s Chewing Gum.” Follow the steps or you
can apply your own technique in summarizing a text. Make sure to retain all the
necessary ideas of the article.

Wrigley’s Chewing Gum

(1) Wrigley’s chewing gum was actually developed as a premium to be given
away with other product rather than as a primary product for sale. As a teenager,
William Wrigley Jr. was working for his father in Chicago selling soap that has been
manufactured in his father’s factory. The soap was not very popular with merchants
because it was priced at 5 cents, and this selling price did not leave a good profit margin
for the merchants. Wrigley convinced his father to raise the price to ten cents and to
give away cheap umbrellas as a premium for the merchants. This worked successfully,
confirming to Wrigley that the use of premium was an effective sales tool.
(2) Wrigley then established his own company; in his company he was selling
soap as a wholesaler, giving baking soda away as a premium, and using a cook book to
promote each deal. Over time, the baking soda and cookbook became more popular
than the soap, so Wrigley began a new operation selling baking soda, he soon decided
on chewing gum. Once again, when Wrigley realized that the demand for premium was
stronger than the demand for the original product, he created the Wm. Wrigley Jr.
Company to produce and sell chewing gum.
(3) Wrigley started out with two brands of gum, Vassar and Lotta gums, and soon
introduced Juicy Fruit and Spearmint. The latter two brands grew in popularity, while the
first two were phased out. Juicy Fruit and Spearmint are two of Wrigley’s main brand to
this day.

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