What is a Paraphrase? How is it Going to Help You in IELTS?

Paraphrasing means rewriting a phrase (a group of words) or sentence in your own words without copying it and most importantly, keeping in mind that the meaning remains the same and that your rewritten sentence should not match with the original sentence word for word.

How Paraphrasing is Helpful to you in IELTS?

It is one of the essential skills required to achieve a good band score in IELTS as you need to use paraphrasing skills in almost all the four modules viz. Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. In listening, you find the question paraphrased but the meaning would be the same as per the audio being played and hence, understanding paraphrasing is important.

Similarly, questions are paraphrased (e.g. using synonyms) in the reading section as well and you need to search the information given in the reading passage. However, in case of the writing module, you yourself have to paraphrase the question (e.g. essay introduction) and in the same way, it is good to paraphrase the question while answering follow-up questions in speaking. You can use several paraphrase tools to perform your tasks.

What are the Three Ways to Paraphrase Information You Find While Doing Research?

There are different methods of paraphrasing sentences without plagiarism:

1. Use Synonyms

One of the effective ways of paraphrasing is to replace some words in the sentence with synonyms.

Example

Crime needs to be controlled as it affects the development of a city.

It is necessary to control violence in the city as it hampers its growth.

2. Change Active to Passive Voice

Changing the voice of a sentence from active to passive is another good method of paraphrasing a sentence.

Example

The government should implement the changes in policies as quickly as possible.

The changes in policies should be implemented by the government as soon as possible.

3. Change the order of words/ phrases

The simplest way of paraphrasing is to change the order of words in a sentence.

Example

The status of women in society has changed a lot for the past few years.

In society, there has been a drastic change in the status of women for the last few years.

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