Teaching Students to Paraphrase

Teaching Students to Paraphrase

The end of the school year is fast approaching, and students across the country are turning in their final papers. Many teachers will require students to submit essays through plagiarism-checking Web sites like Turnitin, to ensure that students' words are their own and weren't lifted from the Internet.

It's great that there's technology to catch plagiarism. However, the problem is that not all cheaters intend to plagiarize. They just don't understand how to use their sources. Students often have trouble deciding when to cite, paraphrase, or summarize a text. And when they do paraphrase, they don't always do it well. When I was a middle school English teacher, I had students who knew what paraphrasing means--putting something in your own words--but when they actually had to do it, they thought they could simply replace a word or two with synonyms and leave the rest alone.

I suggest that teachers set aside one or two days for lessons on plagiarism, paraphrasing, and citing sources. It's not enough to tell students to paraphrase; we need to show them how. Here are some great, classroom-ready lessons teachers can use.

1. Amsco's Strategy Central for the Active Reader, Information features an engaging lesson on incorporating information from outside sources. Students are taught how to decide among quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing, and they're given examples of each.

2. NCTE's ReadWriteThink offers the lesson "Exploring Plagiarism, Copyright, and Paraphrasing." This lesson has students examine passages and determine whether they think the text was plagiarized. Then students learn about copyright and fair-use laws, and they're given practice paraphrasing passages from a textbook.

3. The New York Times Learning Network has a great lesson called "Please No Posers." This lesson has students summarize a New York Times article. Students also write opinion articles about plagiarism.

4. Plagiarism.org offers a section of printable handouts on citing sources, on the different types of plagiarism, and more.

5. Purdue's Online Writing Lab contains lessons on effective paraphrasing and on the differences among quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing.

Teachers should also check out the book Preventing Plagiarism: Tips and Techniques by Laura Hennessey DeSena. The book talks about how classroom assignments can be designed to encourage original thinking, so students learn to develop confidence in their own ideas.

Good luck with the last weeks of school!