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00:00Hey, those are from my report!
00:15Dear Tim and Moby, what is paraphrasing and how do I do it and when?
00:20From Millie.
00:21Good question.
00:24Paraphrasing is when you take someone else's speech or writing and put it in your own words.
00:29Well, first of all, it's really useful for taking notes.
00:33It's way quicker to summarize a book or a lecture than it is to copy everything down.
00:38And when you put something into your own words, you'll be way more likely to remember it.
00:43You'll also understand it better.
00:46Then you can use what you've learned in your own writing.
00:50For written sources, there are a few steps to writing a good paraphrase.
00:55First off, you want to read the original carefully, making sure that you really understand
00:59it.
01:00If there's a word you don't know, look it up.
01:04The Komodo dragon is the world's largest lizard, measuring over ten feet from snout to tail.
01:10It lives only on six islands in the Indonesian archipelago.
01:14One swipe of a dragon's tail can render its prey senseless, and its venom is as deadly
01:19as a cobra's.
01:21Hmm, archipelago.
01:23What's that?
01:25Ah, I see.
01:29It's a chain of islands.
01:31Next, you'll want to close the book and write a couple of sentences that restate the key
01:35ideas of the passage.
01:38Well, if you close the book, you can be sure you're not just copying what you read.
01:49When you're finished, open the book back up and check your paraphrase against the original
01:53to make sure you have all the key information.
01:56Oops.
01:58You can't copy words or phrases that are unique to the text that you're paraphrasing.
02:03Measuring over ten feet from snout to tail is exactly what's written in the encyclopedia,
02:08and it's something I probably wouldn't have said myself.
02:11So I'm going to rephrase it.
02:16Be sure to write down where you got the information so you can find the source again.
02:21Noting the source also means that you can avoid accidentally plagiarizing.
02:27Plagiarism is when you copy someone else's work and pass it off as your own.
02:32Yeah, it's bad.
02:35Sometimes it's hard to understand the difference between plagiarizing and paraphrasing.
02:40Copying a passage word for word is plagiarism, but so is taking someone else's ideas without
02:46giving them credit.
02:48Say one of my sources writes that some legends about dragons are based on stories of Komodo
02:53dragons.
02:54If I put that idea in my report without naming a source, that'd be plagiarism.
03:00Well, because otherwise it sounds like I came up with the idea myself.
03:05Even if I paraphrased the wording, it was based on someone else's creative idea.
03:10So I have to make it clear that the original work was theirs.
03:14A good paraphrase doesn't sound like the original piece of writing, but it should contain
03:18all the important details.
03:21You can paraphrase spoken material like speeches and lectures, too.
03:26Listen closely, write down key phrases and important ideas, and then try to put the main
03:31message into your own words.
03:34Take this clip from Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech.
03:38One day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join
03:44hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
03:48I have a dream today!
03:51Now how would you sum up what he said?
03:57Here's what I've got.
03:59In his I Have a Dream speech, Dr. King shares his vision for a world without racism.
04:05He describes a future where black and white children can live as sisters and brothers
04:10in peace and harmony.
04:12Right, any phrase you use word for word has to be quoted.
04:17Since I'm citing the source right in my paraphrase, it's clear who said it.
04:22Yeah, I know, it sounds like a lot of rules.
04:26But once you get used to it, it'll be like second nature.
04:28Anyway, are you going to help me put these back in order?
04:33No.
04:34No you are not.