Paraphrasing to transform knowledge in advanced graduate student writing

Abstract

Based on one's comprehension and interpretation of the original text, paraphrasing goes beyond a faithful account of the source text. Differing from previous research which has mostly focused on students' re-use of the source text, this study explores whether and how students paraphrase to express their own views. We examined 192 paraphrases identified by 18 advanced graduate students in their academic papers across disciplines at a North American university. Analyses of students' writing, their sources, and their own accounts present an exposition of writers' thinking and processes of paraphrasing featuring various types of linguistic adaptations and content recontextualization. The study suggests that paraphrasing by these advanced graduate students is a process of smoothly integrating the source information into the new text by syntactically restructuring, interpreting and recounting only the source text with relevance to the new text. During the process, the writer sometimes paraphrases to incorporate information in the immediate source text with that gained from prior readings.