Quoting and paraphrasing techniques
Quoting and Paraphrasing Techniques1
1. Quoting
iii when you think that the author has made a point particularly succinctly.
As a 'rule of thumb' quotation shouldn't take more than 10% of an essay.
(Cullingworth, 72: 51)
2. An experimental Community Development Project is under way aimed at finding ‘ways of meeting more effectively the needs of individuals, families and communities, whether native or immigrant, suffering from many forms of social deprivation’ (Cullingworth, 72: 141)
(Stewart 1963: 51)
6. In the study conducted by Steward (1963) a quality circle is seen as being ‘a group of workers who meet together to discuss workplace improvements’ (Steward 1963: 12). No mention is made in the study of reporting mechanisms and the need to establish formal channels for communicating the results of these discussions to higher management.
Read the following guidelines and then do task 2.
1 When we quote the actual words of an author or authors, we need to give their name/names, the year of publication and the page number from which the quotation comes.
Smith (2004:12) argues that the public funding of political parties is ‘extremely controversial’.
5 If the quotation is long, start a new line and indent the whole extract slightly. It is not necessary to use quotation marks for long quotations. For example:
Original
The most useful way of making a world survey is to identify families of languages, preferably using criteria such as those worked out by myself in 1933, showing relationships by origin and development (Brook, 1998: 98).
8 If you add something to a quotation to explain an abbreviation or a reference in the text, or for some other reason to make the quotation more intelligible, this addition should be enclosed in square brackets [ ]. For example:
All the languages of the south-west coast [of New Britain] are Non-Austronesian, overlaid with a veneer of Austronesian (Jones, 1991: 71).
It should be:
Brown has defined the critical period for language learning as ‘a biologically determined period of life when ...’(year of publication: page number)
Self motivation to learn is preferable to motivation imposed by external sources.
c) Johnson and Scholes (1984: 44) described the manager’s recipe for change as, ‘Faced with the need for change, managers will seek to deal with the situation in ways which protect the recipe from challenge.’
have consulted other sources
have understood the literature
3. Without looking back at the section, make some notes about it in English. 4. Think about what the original author said: why are you writing about this (e.g. to give evidence for your own your point of view, to contrast with what another writer has said) and how does it relate to the essay question you are addressing? Write some notes about this too. |
change word order
use synonyms
Task 42
Read the text below and then decide which is the better paraphrase, (a) or (b).
Research into deposits of the Egyptian Nile indicate that a long dry period in the mountains at the river’s source may have led to a lack of water for irrigation around 2180 BC, which was when the collapse of Egyptian society began.
Paraphrasing techniques
Urbanization of the Western countries began with the industrial revolution and proceeded as the nations moved from an agrarian to an industrial society. This sentence can be summarised by putting information in the noun group: |
However, a paraphrase does not normally aim to shorten a text, but merely to restate it. Here are some paraphrasing techniques:
c Alternating active and passive verbs
|
Find synonyms for the words in italics in the following sentences:
1. The growth of the car industry parallels the development of modern capitalism.
b) controversy > controversial This is an important technique for paraphrasing because it also involves changing the original sentence structure in some way unlike the use of synonymy. The following example illustrates this: |
Change the word form of the words in italics and rewrite the sentence:
1. In the 1920s Alfred Sloan’s management theories helped General Motors to become the world’s dominant car company.
Urbanization of the Western countries began with the industrial revolution and proceeded as the nations moved from an agrarian to an industrial society. Although the large scale population movement from rural to urban areas during the industrial revolution was the initial cause of urbanization in the developed world... |
Task 1: possible answers
1. This is a contentious statement, especially the last sentence.
6. This is a definition.
7. This is a personal and contentious statement.
c) Johnson and Scholes (1984: 44) described managers’ reaction to needing to change as seeking ‘to deal with the situation in ways which protect the recipe from challenge.’
d) Intonation is very important in spoken English. According to Harmer (1991:12):
Keynesianists: income money (demand for money causes stock changes)
my understanding: directly opposite views, both 1-directional.
Task 4
(b) is better: ‘changes in the weather’ and ‘the region to the south’ (in (a)) are not as precise as ‘a long dry period’ and ‘the mountains at the river’s source (in (b)). Moreover, the reference to the research is lost in (a). Also the claim in (a) that the ending of Egyptian society is probably caused by changes in the weather seems to go a bit further than the original.
In the 1920s with help from the managerial theories of Alfred Sloan, General Motors dominated the world’s car companies.
Task 7: suggested answer
Last updated 2010 and task 3 added, EVG.↩︎
