Module 3 avoiding Plagiarism: paraphrasing/summary

One of the most important aspects of reading for academic study is reading so you can make use of the ideas of other people. This is important as you need to show that you have understood the materials you have read and that you can use their ideas and findings in your own way. In fact, this is an essential skill for every student. Spack (1988, p. 42) has pointed out that the most important skill a student can engage in is "the complex activity to write from other texts", which is "a major part of their academic experience." It is very important when you do this to make sure you use your own words, unless you are quoting. You must make it clear when the words or ideas that you are using are your own and when they are taken from another writer. You must not use another person's words or ideas as if they were your own: this is Plagiarism and plagiarism is regarded as a very serious offence.

Paraphrasing refers to rewriting a given sentence using your own words. When we need to use a sentence in our writing that someone else wrote, we paraphrase it. That is, we use the same idea(s) in that sentence and write it differently. In addition to using different words, we use different grammar. The main purpose of paraphrasing has to do with being able to use someone else’s ideas while we write our own texts. Of course, it is required that any writer acknowledges the original source using the proper citation format.

 

Example1: Original sentence: PayLess is closed because of the bad weather conditions. Inappropriate paraphrase: PayLess is closed because of the bad weather. This paraphrase has too many words, such as “PayLess is closed because of” are repeated. It is important to use different words and grammatical structure, while keeping the same meaning of the original sentence. Appropriate paraphrase: Since the weather is terrible, the grocery store is not open. As can be seen in the above example, in addition to using different words, the grammatical structure of the sentence was changed by starting with the second part (dependent clause) of the original sentence.

Example 2: Source Material Some argue that the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States ought to receive a path to US citizenship, while others claim that these immigrants need to be deported back to their home countries. Inappropriate paraphrase Some say that the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States ought to receive a way for citizenship, while other people say that the immigrants should go back to their countries. The inappropriate paraphrase is too close to the original sentence. Several words are the same and the complex structure of the sentence is the same. Deleting some words from the original sentence is not enough to write an appropriate paraphrase. Appropriate paraphrase Although some individuals maintain that undocumented immigrants should go back to their countries, others defend these immigrants’ right for a path to citizenship. The appropriate paraphrase uses a different structure for the sentence, and most words are different from the original.

Summarizing

A summary should be a short version of a longer original source. Its main goal is to present a large amount of information in a short and concise text that includes only the most important ideas of the original text.

Example 3: Original sentence: “The movement toward education by computer is developing fast. Massive Open Online Courses, called MOOCs, are changing how people learn in many places. For years, people could receive study materials from colleges or universities and take part in online classes. But such classes were not designed for many thousands of students at one time, as MOOCs are.” (MOOCS Are Moving Forward, Voice of America, learningenglish.voanews.com) Inappropriate summary: Voice of America website: “Computer education is growing fast. MOOCs are influencing how we study. People received materials from universities for a long time to be able to take classes online. MOOCs are the only ones thousands can take at a time.” The inappropriate summary is almost as long as the original text, which is a characteristic of a paraphrase. A summary needs to be concise. Appropriate summary: According to a Voice of America article, a fast-growing MOOCs movement allows thousands to take online classes at once, changing how we learn. The appropriate summary keeps the original main idea and it is much shorter than the original text.

Example 4 As part of an essay, you need to include a section of about 100 words on the formation of volcanic islands. You find the following text: Volcanic Islands Islands have always fascinated the human mind. Perhaps it is the instinctive response of man, the land animal, welcoming a brief intrusion of earth in the vast, overwhelming expanse of sea. When sailing in a great ocean basin, a thousand miles from the nearest continent, with miles of water beneath the ship, one may come upon an island which has been formed by a volcanic eruption under the sea. One's imagination can follow its slopes down through darkening waters to its base on the sea floor. One wonders why and how it arose there in the midst of the ocean. The birth of a volcanic island is an event marked by prolonged and violent travail: the forces of the earth striving to create, and all the forces of the sea opposing. At the place where the formation of such an island begins, the sea floor is probably nowhere more than about fifty miles thick. In it are deep cracks and fissures, the results of unequal cooling and shrinkage in past ages. Along such lines of weakness the molten lava from the earth's interior presses up and finally bursts forth into the sea. But a submarine volcano is different from a terrestrial eruption, where the lava, molten rocks, and gases are hurled into the air from an open crater. Here on the bottom of the ocean the volcano has resisting it all the weight of the ocean water above it. Despite the immense pressure of, it may be, two or three miles of sea water, the new volcanic cone builds upwards towards the surface, in flow after flow of lava. Once within reach of the waves, its soft ash is violently attacked by the motion of the water which continually washes away its upper surface, so that for a long period the potential island may remain submerged. But eventually, in new eruptions, the cone is pushed up into the air, where the lava hardens and forms a rampart against the attacks of the waves. 1. Read the passage carefully twice from beginning to end. 2. Remember your purpose: to describe the formation of a volcanic island. 3. Select the relevant information 4. Mark all the points which should come into your answer. Do this very carefully, and be sure not to miss anything. The birth of a volcanic island is an event marked by prolonged and violent travail: the forces of the earth striving to create, and all the forces of the sea opposing. At the place where the formation of such an island begins, the sea floor is probably nowhere more than about fifty miles thick. In it are deep cracks and fissures, the results of unequal cooling and shrinkage in past ages. Along such lines of weakness the molten lava from the earth's interior presses up and finally bursts forth into the sea. But a submarine volcano is different from a terrestrial eruption, where the lava, molten rocks, and gases are hurled into the air from an open crater. Here on the bottom of the ocean the volcano has resisting it all the weight of the ocean water above it. Despite the immense pressure of, it may be, two or three miles of sea water, the new volcanic cone builds upwards towards the surface, in flow after flow of lava. Once within reach of the waves, its soft ash is violently attacked by the motion of the water which continually washes away its upper surface, so that for a long period the potential island may remain submerged. But eventually, in new eruptions, the cone is pushed up into the air, where the lava hardens andforms a rampart against the attacks of the waves. 5. Make notes island formation: earth versus sea. where? sea bed, not more 50 miles thick, cracked and uneven. weak lava bursts through. c.f. land volcano: no sea pressure how? lava cone pushes upwards surface - washed away by waves submerged lava hardens island. 6. Using this list of points, write your rough draft, referring to the original only when you want to make sure of some point. A volcanic island comes into being after a long and violent struggle has taken place between the forces of the earth and the sea. The island begins to form when hot lava breaks through weak points on the sea-bed where the earth's crust is not more than fifty miles thick and is marked by deep cracks. The volcanic island, unlike a land volcano, has to push up through the immense pressure of the sea. The cone made up of lava finally reaches the surface, but it does not appear because waves wash away its upper surface. When the lava hardens it stands up to the waves and the island is formed. 7. After correcting your draft, write an accurate copy of your text. A volcanic island is born only after a long and violent struggle between the forces of the earth and the sea. It begins to form when hot lava breaks through a cracked and uneven part of the sea-bed where the earth's crust is weak. Unlike the land volcano, it has to build upwards despite the immense water-pressure until it finally reaches the surface. Even then it is too soft to withstand the waves and remains underwater until the cone is pushed into the air from below and the lava hardens. 8. Check your work. Take care to make your text accurate. Your sentences should be well connected to each other so that your text reads as a continuous paragraph.

Exercise 1

Read the text and summarise it in your own words:

Work

Mankind is always searching for a better life. One way of improving it is to plan work so that it corresponds to the capacities and needs of the worker. Ergonomics is concerned with fitting work to man. It doesn't limit its goal to the elimination of physical hazards to health, but aims at making the work more satisfying to the worker.

Exercise 2

In a paragraph of not more than 100 words, sum up what the writer says about the causes of conflict:

The causes of conflict

The evidence taken from the observation of the behavior of apes and children suggests that there are three clearly separable groups of simple causes for the outbreak of fighting and the exhibition of aggressiveness by individuals.
One of the most common causes of fighting among both children and apes was over the possession of external objects. The disputed ownership of any desired object - food, clothes, toys, females, and the affection of others - was sufficient ground for an appeal to force. On Monkey Hill disputes over females were responsible for the death of thirty out of thirty-three females. Two points are of particular interest to notice about these fights for possession.
In the first place they are often carried to such an extreme that they end in the complete destruction of the objects of common desire. Toys are torn to pieces. Females are literally torn limb from limb. So overriding is the aggression once it has begun that it not only overflows all reasonable boundaries of selfishness but utterly destroys the object for which the struggle began and even the self for whose advantage the struggle was undertaken.
In the second place it is observable, at least in children, that the object for whose possesion aggression is started may sometimes be desired by one person only or merely because it is desired by someone else. There were many cases observed by Dr Isaacs where toys and other objects which had been discarded as useless were violently defended by their owners when they became the object of some other child’s desire. The grounds of possessiveness may, therefore, be irrational in the sense that they are derived from inconsistent judgments of value. Whether sensible or irrational, contests over possession are commonly the occasion for the most ruthless use of force among children and apes.
One of the commonest kinds of object arousing possessive desire is the notice, good will, affection, and service of other members of the group. Among children one of the commonest causes of quarrelling was ‘jealousy’ - the desire for the exclusive possession of the interest and affection of someone else, particularly the adults in charge of the children. This form of behaviour is sometimes classified as a separate cause of conflict under the name of ‘rivalry’ or ‘jealousy’. But, in point of fact, it seems to us that it is only one variety of possessiveness. The object of desire is not a material object - that is the only difference. The object is the interest and affection of other persons. What is wanted, however, is the exclusive right to that interest and affection - a property in emotions instead of in things. As subjective emotions and as causes of conflict, jealousy and rivalry are fundamentally similar to the desire for the uninterrupted possession of toys or food. Indeed, very often the persons, property which is desired, are the sources of toys and food.
Possessiveness is, then, in all its forms a common cause of fighting. If we are to look behind the mere facts of behaviour for an explanation of this phenomenon, a teleological cause is not far to seek. The exclusive right to objects of desire is a clear and simple advantage to the possessor obit. It carries with it the certainty and continuity of satisfaction. Where there is only one claimant to a good, frustration and the possibility floss is reduced to a minimum. It is, therefore, obvious that, if the ends of the self are the only recognized ends, the whole powers of the agent, including the fullest use of his available force, will be used to establish and defend exclusive rights to possession.
Another cause of aggression closely allied to possessiveness is the tendency for children and apes greatly to resent the intrusion of a stranger into their group. A new child in the class may be laughed at, isolated, and disliked and even set upon and pinched and bullied. A new monkey may be poked and bitten to death. It is interesting to note that it is only strangeness within a similarity of species that is resented. Monkeys do not mind being joined by a goat or a rat. Children do not object when animals are introduced to the group. Indeed, such novelties are often welcomed. But when monkeys meet a new monkey or children a strange child, aggression often occurs. This suggests strongly that the reason for the aggression is fundamentally possessiveness. The competition of the newcomers is feared. The present members of the group feel that there will be more rivals for the food or the attention of the adults.
Finally, another common source of fighting among children is a failure or frustration in their own activity. A child will be prevented either by natural causes such as bad weather or illness or by the opposition of some adult from doing something he wishes to do at a given moment - sail his boat or ride the bicycle. The child may also frustrate itself by failing, through lack of skill or strength, to complete successfully some desired activity. Such a child will then in the ordinary sense become ’naughty.’ He will be in a bad or surly temper. And, what is of interest from our point of view, the child will indulge in aggression - attacking and fighting other children or adults. Sometimes the object of aggression will simply be the cause of frustration, a straightforward reaction. The child will kick or hit the nurse who forbids the sailing of his boat. But sometimes - indeed, frequently - the person or thing that suffers the aggression is quite irrelevant and innocent of offence. The angry child will stamp the ground or box the ears of another child when neither the ground nor the child attacked is even remotely connected with the irritation or frustration.
Of course, this kind of behaviour is so common that everyone feels it to be obvious and to constitute no serious scientific problem. That a small boy should pull his sister’s hair because it is raining does not appear to the ordinary unreflecting person to be an occasion for solemn scientific inquiry. He is, as we should all say, ‘in a bad temper.’ Yet it is not, in fact, really obvious either why revenge should be taken on entirely innocent objects, since no good to the aggressor can come of it, or why children being miserable should seek to make others miserable also. It is just a fact of human behaviour that cannot really be deduced from any general principle of reason. But it is, as we shall see, of very great importance for our purpose. It shows how it is possible, at the simplest and most primitive level, for aggression and fighting to spring from an entirely irrelevant and partially hidden cause. Fighting to possess a desired object is straightforward and rational, however disastrous its consequences, compared with fighting that occurs because, in a different and unrelated activity, some frustration has barred the road to pleasure. The importance of this possibility for an understanding of group conflict must already be obvious.

(From Personal Aggressiveness and War by E. F. M. Durbin and John Bowlby)

Exercise 3