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Paraphrasing is an essential skill for annotations as you must present ideas and supporting arguments from the original source in your own words.
As readers, we may identify ideas/sentences that are important to capture as part of our summary, but sentences can never stand alone on their own. Paraphrasing allows you to blend ideas from a source with your own.
First Steps to Effective Paraphrasing
Preview the text first. You need to understand that text before you can put it into your words.
Underline any words or ideas that are not clear.
Use a dictionary to look up words you do not know. You can use a thesaurus to find a word with a similar meaning.
Circle words are phrases that cannot be changed. These may be definitions, names, or scientific words.
As you can see by the steps listed above, understanding and meaning are the most important part of paraphrasing.
Once understanding of the original source is established, the next step is to find a writing strategy.
Here is a great video that can help you become a better paraphraser.
The LC guide on Paraphrasingexplains four strategies you can use.
