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Polish your writing : How to paraphrase the essay better with useful tools?

What is PARAPHRASING?

Paraphrasing is rewriting what someone said or wrote in your own words. You may wonder why we have to do paraphrasing? It is not only about scoring higher, but also to make the linkage between your idea and reference closer and coherent. 

How to do paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing always sounds difficult to students, especially when English is not your first language. Lacking vocabulary and phrases, it is uneasy to present our ideas accurately let alone paraphrasing other’s thoughts.  

To begin with,  we have to understand the meaning of the text. We may not need to explain every single word of the paragraph but we would better read back and forth in order to comprehend the main idea. After reading the article, try to express the idea in our words. 

5 ways to do paraphrasing

1. Synonyms

Using synonyms can make your text less repetitive and more captivating. Beware of the overuse of synonyms which may make your article sound strange, so that you have to choose your words carefully. Moreover, avoiding rephrasing specific terms by synonyms as it lowers the accuracy of your expressions and language. 

Example: 

Having a vegan lifestyle is beneficial for protecting animal rights and sustainability of our world.

Adopting a vegan lifestyle is advantageous for supporting animal welfare and our sustainable development. 

2. Reform your sentence structure

Using different grammar structures can make your sentences more diverse.

Example:

Being generous to others, Becky gains people’s trust. 

→ Becky gains people’s trust because she is generous to others. 

3. Parts of speech

Changing the word form of the vocabulary is the simplest way to paraphrase the text.

Example:

There is a great difference between high school and university life.

The life in high school and university is highly different.

Leaving children home alone may pose great danger.

→ It is dangerous to leave children home alone

4. From affirmative to negative, active to passive

It is possible to change the sentence from affirmative to negative or active to passive as it can emphasise your focus. 

5. Combine sentences

You can either break down or combine sentences to restructure the paragraph. Using different sentence structure can show a slightly different meaning with the original text and make it more coherent to your idea.

A useful tool to polish your idea: Quillbot

Many of you have learnt paraphrasing at school, but sometimes there are limitations in our language and we would like to do it efficiently. Apart from paraphrasing with the 5 strategies, a useful AI paraphrasing tool Quillbot can ease your pressure on polishing your writing. 

**We are not promoting plagiarism, and Quillbot is a useful tool to make your own work more coherent and fluent. 

How to use Quillbot to rewrite my sentences?

First and foremost, you have to put down your writing on the left input box and click “Paraphrase”.

The changes are highlighted in different colours.

  • Orange-highlighted: Changed words
  • Yellow-underlined: Structural changes
  • Purple-highlighted: Thesaurus (Select a word or phrase with same meaning to enhance the sentence)
  • Blue-highlighted: Longest unchanged words

You can click on the highlighted words or phrases to change the options.

Besides, you can choose the suitable mode for your text.

  • Standard: Rewrites the input and keeping the meaning
  • Fluency: Improves the fluency and fixes the grammatical mistakes

Try Quillbot and nail your writing today!