Week 2B - Synthesize and Paraphrase Research

Activity 1 | Activity 2 | Activity 3 | Activity 4

Activity 1: Introduction to Paraphrasing

Now that you have completed your research and the annotated bibliography, you will need to turn your research into usable information for your paper. This means that you will need to decide which material will be closely paraphrased, directly quoted, or remotely paraphrased. Most of your paper will be remotely paraphrased, which means that you learn to avoid using any of the language of the authors you read. Instead, you take the most important aspects of one or several articles and synthesize or arrange those thoughts into your own wording and style. In this section, you will learn how to use one of your articles to paraphrase a portion and synthesize several pages. Be sure to place an in-text citation at the end of your paraphrase. This is good practice for later tasks.

Synthesis:

How do you make sense of all this data you have found? What is important and what isn’t? The skill of synthesis is essential for capturing the information from any resource you read in your research. When you read complex material, it is important to take notes and find the major points that the author is communicating about a research topic. If you can master this skill, you will become very efficient at finding the main topics of each article you read and noticing which ideas are unique to each author. For this task, you will synthesize only one article or one chapter of a book.  Be sure to provide in-text citations at the end of each of your paragraphs. Although this may feel repetitive, you will be synthesizing all your articles and sources in your final essay, so it is important to practice using in-text citations in this task.

Plagiarism

Most students know that intentional plagiarism involves submitting another writer's writing as your own, a practice that can result in harsh punishment. What is not as clearly understood by some writers is what constitutes unintentional plagiarism. Unintentional plagiarism can occur in a number of ways. Sometimes a writer does not mark quoted material appropriately in the research gathering phase, and then when the writer uses this material, he or she does not remember whether the notes were a direct quote or a paraphrase. Another problematic situation occurs when a researcher borrows heavily from the wording of the original source in an attempt to produce a paraphrase. The following example includes a short quote taken from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., followed by examples of both unacceptable and acceptable paraphrases:

• “It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather ‘nonviolently’ in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation.” (King,1963).
  
• King argues that although the police have exercised some discipline in controlling the demonstrators, they have exerted control to preserve an evil system, that of segregation. Unacceptable Paraphrase (borrows too much original language)
• King points out that police who showed restraint in confronting demonstrators were still upholding segregation (King,1963). Acceptable Paraphrase

If you paraphrase carefully, you should have no problem with unintentional plagiarism. However, you may encounter another problem as you incorporate sources in your writing. If you quote extensively when you should have paraphrased the same content, you may appear to be filling space that should be reserved for your own writing. This means if you do use direct quotes, do so sparingly. Only quote exceptional or noteworthy language that cannot be paraphrased without losing the original impact of the actual wording.

King, M.L. (1963), Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.mlkonline.net/jail.html