In TOEFL Speaking and Writing, paraphrasing is very important. Even if a response in these sections is grammatical and easy to understand, it will still receive a very low score if the test-taker copies a lot of the language from the passages or audio tracks.

“Echoing” words you read or hear, repeating them with minimal changes, is something you can easily do without even realizing it. In less formal, non-academic English use, it can be natural and acceptable to imitate words you’ve just heard or read—but this is definitely not OK in the academic English on the TOEFL exam. To avoid this common TOEFL mistake, it’s important to practice paraphrasing during TOEFL prep. And it’s good build mental habits that help you to paraphrase things easily. You want true paraphrasing to come very naturally to you on test day.

Kate has already written a great post on paraphrasing practice exercises you can include in your TOEFL studies. In today’s post, I’ll walk you through another activity that can help get really comfortable with paraphrasing.

Delphi 2015 activation. The Fun of Learning English! ESL Resources for Students and Teachers. Some of the popular games include “ESL Homophones”, “Unscramble”, and “Letter Blocks”. Try these exercises to learn the art of paraphrasing. Photographs: A module on using photographs for writing. Welcome to ESL Printables, the website where English Language teachers exchange resources: worksheets, lesson plans, activities, etc. Our collection is growing every day with the help of many teachers. If you want to download you have to send your own contributions. Summarizing worksheets.

As you look over the activity below, remember that paraphrasing is more than just someone else’s words and saying them differently. In the broadest sense, paraphrasing is about understanding that there are many different ways to say the same thing. In a good paraphrase, you choose a new way of saying something that personally works for you. In this way, you don’t just restate a piece of information—you put it in your preferred words, making the information your own.

Think of paraphrases as learning tool that allows you to understand ideas more fully, in your own thoughts and words. To see how this works, I’m going to show you refer you to some lines from a TOEFL Speaking passage that can be found on the ETS website. After that, I’ll show you several different paraphrases of the same original information.

The passage is one for Speaking Task 2. Its heading begins with the word “Sculpture Courses…”, and you can find the passage on page 23 of TOEFL Quick Prep Volume 1.)

Do you have that passage open now? Good!

TOEFL Speaking Task 2 reading passages like this one are ideal for paraphrasing practice. This is because the information in a Task 2 passage needs to be shortened into a very brief summary that you can easily recall and restate when you start speaking. This kind of shortened restatement requires sharp paraphrasing skills. Let’s look at three of my own possible paraphrases of this 85 word article:

PARAPHRASE 1:

The university will discontinue the sculpture program. Administrators say students simply don’t have much interest in sculpture anymore, and the one sculpture professor in the art department is about to retire anyway.

PARAPHRASE 2:

University officials have announced that the sculpture program will be cancelled. They cite declining student interest as one of the main reasons for the cancellation. Another issue is a lack of instructors; the only teacher of sculpture courses will be retiring shortly. Finally, the art department doesn’t have enough money for more sculpture classes.

PARAPHRASE 3:

The school’s sculpture classes are all about to be permanently removed from the art department’s offerings, as students are no longer interested in sculpture, the only sculpture professor is leaving, and there is not enough funding to keep offering these courses.

PARAPHRASE 4:

The art department at the university is getting more and more students, but at the same time, fewer and fewer students are enrolling in sculpture classes. Because students are no longer interested in sculpture and because the sculpture professor is retiring, school administrators decided to cancel the sculpture program.

The fun thing about human language is that there are almost infinite ways to say anything. I could probably come up with at least ten more paraphrases of the passage, easily. There’s a lot of different directions you can go with a paraphrase! Just remember the two important rules for TOEFL paraphrasing: make the new statement shorter, and try to use as few of the original words as possible.

As you go through my paraphrases, you may find reasons to criticize the four different approaches I took above. You might feel I left out an important idea, included an unnecessary detail, or made a paraphrase too long or too short. If you can find fault in my re-wording of the passage, good! The example paraphrases above should help you think about how you would paraphrase something, if you did the activity yourself.

On your own, try making multiple paraphrases of text or dialogue from a TOEFL practice material. Do this multiple-paraphrase exercise for other samples English writing and speech too. Think about which of your multiple paraphrases would work best for you if you were sitting for the actual exam. Aim for the paraphrases that are efficiently short and capture your true thoughts on the info you’ve just taken in.

English paraphrasing can be hard, but it can also be fun. Here is an English paraphrasing game that makes re-wording your sources interesting and enjoyable.

or to post comments. Earlybird aka Thunderbird 10 stable version Has been a great solution to a difficult problem: Shortly before extended travel my win7 64-bit laptop developed a problem that prevented 32bit programs from accessing networks.32bit internet explorer would flash and close. If it not recommended elsewhere on this site or there is something specific to using it in 64-bit Windows then I will include some relevant detail.Remah - Editor. I've taken over this category again and will be making many changes as the article recommendations have not been actively updated for two years.I will start with three changes affecting the entire article:+ Screenshots will be added.+ The focus will almost exclusively be on 64-bit software.+ 32-bit software that is recommended here will have no discussion and only a link to the category where it is recommended elsewhere on this site. 64 bit operating system download windows 7.

The Rules of The English Paraphrasing Game

The game rules are a somewhat similar to Apples to Apples. There are competing players and there’s a judge. The winner of any round gets to be the judge of the next round.

In each round of the game, the players are given a sentence from an academic passage that they need to paraphrase. There are three different kinds of rounds: a “funny round,” a “dark round,” and a “serious round.”

In the funny round, players try to paraphrase the passage in a way that makes it sound more absurd, using words that sound weird or have a humorous connotation. For instance, if the original passage says “Rainfall in the Amazon Basin was higher than average in that year,” the funny version might be “Sky-water-splatters kerplunking against the Amazon Washtub bounced more and more up, across 12 calendar pages.” …Or something. Everyone’s attempt at “funny” can differ. The main goal is to make something that sounds deliberately silly, while keeping as much of the original meaning as you can. Some meaning will probably change, as humor is an added level of meaning.

In the dark round, replace the original words with paraphrases that have a negative connotation. The goal is to make a normal, neutral writing tone sound angry, scary, or sad. Here, the original meaning will probably change a bit, but you should try not to directly contradict the original statement. I’ll give you an example of this, once again using the original sentence I used in the funny round.

“Rainfall in the Amazon Basin was higher than average in that year” can become the darker “Rainstorms attacking the Amazon Pit were much harder to escape that year.” (I couldn’t think of a negative word for “year.” Can you?)

Finally, in the serious round, the goal is to change the wording of the original statement as much as possible, while changing the meaning of the original statement as little as possible. A secondary goal should be to make the original statement shorter, shortening it as much as possible. This is because simplification is a key part of real academic paraphrasing.

In my example for this round, I know I’m going to do well. As an English teacher, real academic paraphrasing is a great strength of mine. I will turn “Rainfall in the Amazon Basin was higher than average in that year” into “The Amazon Basin’s annual precipitation exceeded the norm.” I went from 12 words to 8. And I didn’t change the name “Amazon Basin” because you can’t change that name without changing the meaning — it’s the name of a real place.

Nice examples, eh? If we were playing this game, I bet I’d win. Or would I? Play this game with your friends and study buddies. See if you can master it, giving even better responses than the ones I gave in this post.