hello everyone my name is chelsea seburn welcome to the smart student where my job is to make the lives of online college students just a little easier today's video lesson is going to be all about how to master the art of paraphrasing so that you can avoid plagiarism when writing your college essays and research papers as always this video is time stamped so feel free to use those to navigate it to the best way that suits your needs but anyways go ahead and give this video a big thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already and
let's go ahead and dive in so for starters what is paraphrasing well it's the restatement of some type of content giving the same meaning in a different form i like to think of paraphrasing as giving the gist aka you summarize the main points from another source and you use new language to express it in other words you put it in your own words the purpose of paraphrasing is to avoid plagiarism which is the passing of another person's ideas as your own and yes plagiarism still occurs when you properly cite your source in your paper unless
it's a direct quote and as a rule of thumb you do not want to use more than one maybe two direct quotes per paper so for the majority of your written material that you've gotten from another source you will need to have it paraphrased correctly under apa 7th edition when you are paraphrasing you need to include the full citation in your reference list and you need to include a shortened in-text citation in the body portion of your paper you do not need to use quotations when you're a paraphrasing because it is not a direct quote
if you need help with apa 7th edition in-text citations please check the link in the description below where i have included that video for you now let's go ahead and move on to the seven easy steps that will help you paraphrase step number one read the original text several times until you grasp its meaning step number two put the original passage away don't look at it step number three note down the key concepts from the main ideas from memory step number four time to paraphrase go ahead and write down your own version of the text
without referencing the original passage step number five compare your paraphrase with the original text step number six if you find any of your text is too similar to the original make changes either reword or rephrase step number seven cite the source using apa 7th edition guidelines including both a full citation in the reference list and a shortened in-text citation seems simple enough right well if it were that simple you probably wouldn't be watching this video right now truth is it can be hard to put something into your own words especially when the original source did
a good job of explaining something to begin with so now i want to walk you through some tips and tricks that you can use to paraphrase when you're stuck for my first tip i suggest starting at a different point than the original source did for example you can start your paraphrase from the end of their idea if there are multiple sentences you can start somewhere from the middle this tip is useful because it usually forces you to say things differently when the text is set in a different order tip number two is to use synonyms
yes you can use a thesaurus to help you paraphrase but no do not use a thesaurus to change a few words and consider the paraphrase done you will always need to do more than just change a few of the words because changing a few of the words would still flag is plagiarism because you are essentially using the other source's content verbatim with the exception of a few words changed here and there the next tip is to change the sentence structure and one of the best most easiest ways you can do this is to change from
active to passive language and vice versa for instance if an original sentence was the dog chase a squirrel this is considered active language you could switch this around to passive language by saying the squirrel was chased by the dog the next tip which is tip number four would be to break up long sentences or to combine shorter ones now that being said you'll want to avoid creating run-on sentences at all costs so if you're going to take shorter sentences and combine them to make one long sentence you'll want to make sure that they still follow
proper grammar guidelines my last tip for you and this is probably my favorite for when you're really truly stuck and that is to explain the concept out loud like you're teaching it to someone else any time you talk about something from memory out loud it forces you to use your critical thinking skills which really helps in the paraphrasing process you will almost always say something differently when you are trying to regurgitate it out loud as if you're trying to teach learned material to someone else all right now that you know the steps to paraphrasing and
you have my best tips and tricks to help you paraphrase let's go ahead and walk through an example of taking content from a passage and turning it into an acceptable paraphrase for college essays or research papers all right everyone here we are let's say that this is the passage that i would like to paraphrase the first thing i'm going to do is read this passage a few times until i fully grasp the meaning of it for the sake of this video i'm going to go ahead and just read it once sustainable business practices are characterized
by environmentally friendly practices initiated by a company for the purpose of becoming a more sustainable organization these companies aim to reduce their environmental footprint through initiatives that cut down on waste poor environmental stewardship and unethical environmental practices that offer a reduced level of sustainability within company practices sustainable business practices differ among industries and are often specific to the company type and the product or service it produces great now i'm going to note down some of the key concepts from this text let's say that key concept number one is this phrase right here saying that sustainable
business practices are characterized by environmentally friendly practices next i might grab a key concept from this middle sentence which might be to reduce their environmental footprint through initiatives in this last sentence the key concept might be that sustainable business practices differ among industries are often specific to the company once i have a good understanding of the material and i've noted down some of the key phrases and key concepts i'm going to go ahead and write out my paraphrase the goal would be to write out your paraphrase without referencing the original text [Music] once your paraphrase
is written out you'll want to compare the two to ensure that nothing is too similar and that you did not deviate from the original meaning of the text let's go ahead and read through this example and see how i did sustainable business practices are explicit to each company on the individual level that being said the purpose of sustainable practices is to reduce the environmental footprint per company effective sustainable business practices that companies can adopt include sustainable initiatives that cut down on waste and poor environmental practices that hinder sustainability my first impression is that this phrase
here initiatives that cut down on ways is too similar because it is the exact words that is used in the original text so what i'm going to do next is reword and rephrase a couple things to note is that i rephrase the word initiatives to say environmentally friendly practices i also changed the words cut down on waste to minimize waste let's go ahead and note the few other tips and tricks i use to paraphrase this passage in my paraphrase i started from the ending idea at the beginning of mine i restructured some of the sentences
and i changed a few of the words from the text let's go ahead and use a plagiarism checker to see how my paraphrase scores perfect my paraphrase is 100 unique and zero plagiarized by the way i've included a link to this plagiarism checker down in the description below in this last section i want to go over some of the biggest mistakes i find students making when trying to paraphrase so mistake number one which is probably the classic most biggest mistake that people make is not paraphrasing correctly but considering themselves safe because they used a citation
as i stated in the beginning of this video the only time you can use someone else's material is when you are directly quoting them in this case if you you're going to use a direct quote you would need to quote that source verbatim meaning that you're going to include it in your paper exactly word for word however you never want to over direct quote in your papers and if you can avoid it all together that's usually the safest route the reason being is that teachers generally don't like papers that are full of direct quotes because
it appears lazy and like you didn't put much of your own original thought into it paraphrasing mistake number two is to use a the source and only change a few of the words and consider yourself done again as i stated before if you only change a few of the words and try and pass it off as your own original thought this is still considered plagiarism even if the source is correctly cited the reason i'm bringing it up again here is because students who use this method can still be marked off or punished to the same
degree as if they intended to plagiarize paraphrasing mistake number three is changing the original meaning of the content this can happen when you include your own opinion or you leave out part of the material that creates an entirely new meaning of the source never ever change some of the core concepts of a source you're citing so that it better fits the point you're trying to make it's simple really if you find that a source isn't fully adding to the point that you're trying to make don't use it find one that better suits your needs awesome
now you guys know what paraphrasing is how to do it and some of the top mistakes to avoid if any of my viewers are interested in one-on-one coaching with me on either paper writing or apa formatting i've included my email down below feel free to shoot me an email let me know you need help and we can go from there and also if you're interested in joining the smart student facebook group community i have a link for that down below as well but as always thank you so much for being here supporting this channel if
you have any questions let me know down in the comment section below i do my best to answer all of you guys in the best way that i can but anyways go ahead and give this video a big thumbs up share it with your friends and of course subscribe for more videos like this every week thank you
