How to Paraphrase?

What is meant by paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing means rewriting a phrase (group of words) or sentence in your own words without copying it and most importantly, keeping in mind that the meaning remains the same and that your rewritten sentence should not match with the original sentence word for word.

How paraphrasing is helpful to you in IELTS?

It is one of the essential skills required to achieve good band score in IELTS as you need to use paraphrasing skill in almost all the four modules viz. Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. In listening, you find the question paraphrased but meaning would be same as per the audio being played and hence, understanding paraphrasing is important.

Similarly, questions are paraphrased (e.g. using synonyms) in reading section as well and you need to search the information given in the reading passage. However, in case of writing module, you yourself have to paraphrase the question (e.g. essay introduction) and in the same way, it is good to paraphrase the question while answering follow-up questions in speaking.

How can you do paraphrasing?

There are different methods of paraphrasing sentences:

1. Use Synonyms
One of the effective ways of paraphrasing is to replace some words in the sentence with synonyms. For example,
Crime needs to be controlled as it affects development of a city.

It is necessary to control violence in the city as it hampers its growth.

2. Change Active to Passive Voice

Changing the voice of sentence from active to passive is another good method of paraphrasing a sentence. For example,
Government should implement the changes in policies as quickly as possible.

The changes in policies should be implemented by the government as soon as possible.

3. Change order of words/phrases

The simplest way of paraphrasing is to change the order of words in a sentence. For example,
The status of women in the society has changed a lot for the past few years.

In the society, there has been a drastic change in the status of women for the last few years.

Practice Questions

1. Technology has benefitted the mankind in different ways.
2. Teams of engineers built battle-worthy robots which fought against each other.
3. There were two million computer misuse offences and 3.8 million fraud offences in the 12 months to the end of March – suggesting fraud is the most common type of crime.
4. Last year Vocalink reported £182m revenue as it processed more than 11 billion transactions. As well as the UK, its technology is also used in Sweden, Singapore, Thailand and the US. The 18 banks that currently own Vocalink will retain a 7.6% share for three years and could receive an extra £169m depending on future targets.
5. Telehouse North confirmed that its network had been affected by a tripped circuit breaker but that engineers were now on site. BT said that connectivity returned to normal by 13:45 BST, though some larger businesses may still have problems. There were reports of other organisations experiencing connectivity trouble, including HMRC.

Sample Answers:

1. Technology has brought benefits to the humans in various ways.
2. Engineers teamed up to build combative robots which battled against each other.
3. Fraud was found to be the most common crime from the fact that there were 2 million and 3.8 million cases of offences related to fraud and misuse of computer respectively reported by the end of March, in the period of one year.
4. With the number of processed transactions reaching over 11 billion, Vocalink earned £182m last year. Its technology is also used by countries such as Singapore, Thailand, Sweden and the US, apart from the UK. The 18 banks currently owning Vocalink will possess 7.6% share for the period of three years and depending on the targets achieved in the future, they can also earn £169m extra.
5. It was confirmed by Telehouse North that a tripped circuit breaker had affected its network but engineers reached on site to resolve the fault. It was informed by BT that connectivity issue was back to normal by 13:45 BST though some of the large businesses may still experience some issues. Other organisations including HMRC were also facing connectivity issues according to the reports.