A research paper is a piece of academic writing based on research-based data and gives a detailed study, appraisal, or conclusion of a particular topic. Conducting extensive research is necessary for writing in any form of content and for any audience.
After detailed research, you will have a complete idea about a topic. These different concepts or ideas broaden the minds of writers to write content by using two writing skills:
- Paraphrasing
- Summarizing
Paraphrasing is essential to show a solid understanding of the original piece of content because, in paraphrasing, you write content in your own words.
With the help of summarizing, students can learn to consider important topics and relevant data in a book or discard irrelevant concepts unrelated to those ideas. The objective of providing a summary of a theory or work is to offer context for your argument by concisely presenting the most important points of view.
You can paraphrase your content to make it unique in plagiarism-free content. You can also sum up your extensive data with the help of summarizing. These two methods help you in creating a unique piece of writing. In this article, we are going to discuss the importance of summarizing and paraphrasing in writing a research paper.
What Is Paraphrasing?
When you restate the meaning of sentences using your own words, It is called “paraphrasing .”When you paraphrase, you put anything that another person wrote into your own words to explain what they had written.
Writing it in your own words will help you make the message clear, more relevant to the audience, or give it more impact.
You can utilize already paraphrased content to create a more extensive research paper, but the content’s original meaning and length should be maintained. You can use paraphrasing tools to facilitate your writing process while writing a research paper. If you want to paraphrase well, and you have the ability to:
- Concentrate more on your studies.
- Simplify complex concepts and present them in language accessible to wide audiences.
- In your paper, prevent plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) and give your unique voice.
Importance of paraphrasing in research work
- Helps in Avoiding Plagiarism
When you rephrase anything in your own words instead of directly copying someone else’s words, you avoid the possibility of unintentionally copying someone else’s work while maintaining the ability to convey the meaning you want. Furthermore, it avoids any legal complications that may arise from someone for copyright infringement.
To paraphrase online effectively, you need to utilize your own words and come up with your concepts after researching a topic. This indicates that the reader will only get information from a single point of view, as opposed to the perspectives of several different sources.
The most prevalent kind of plagiarism is when students copy content from other works without giving credit to their original authors and then submit those passages as their work.
When you rephrase anything, you are writing content in your own words, which means that it is not an exact duplicate of the original content. This makes it much simpler to avoid committing this sort of plagiarism. So this helps in preventing plagiarism in research papers.
- Able to Concentrate More on different Ideas
When you paraphrase another person’s work, you are not just copying and pasting the original text into your own work as it is. Because you are taking the important points and concepts and then writing them into your own words, you are improving your understanding of the concepts presented by the original author.
Your writing will also come across as more natural as a result of this, giving the impression that it was written by you rather than by another individual.
- a better understanding of the topic
When paraphrasing, you must rewrite the source content using your own words instead of the original ones.
This may assist you in better understanding the point that was stated and enhance the quality of your own writing. In addition, by elaborating your thoughts, you can make it simpler for your audience to read and understand it.
Writers need to develop their paraphrasing skills. With the help of paraphrasing, you can write a research paper that is more understandable, precise, clear, and accurate.
- Enhance the Quality of Your Writing.
You will improve your writing skills as a writer if you take the time to paraphrase your phrases properly. When it comes to text that has been paraphrased, you have the ability to avoid making blunders that are quite typical.
Make sure you find authentic sources to back up anything you assert in your essay, as readers are eager to discover the truth.
When you successfully paraphrase online, you not only ensure that the central meaning of the original content is conveyed, but you also avoid any potential confusion. This is crucial to remember, particularly if you are writing for a specific audience.
Paraphrasing improves your punctuation and grammar and avoids spelling mistakes. And you can easily convey your concepts to your audience naturally.
- Help in proving arguments
A successful paraphrasing is an explanation or interpretation that you have given of the thoughts written by another person. In academic writing, paraphrasing is a valuable method for restating or clarifying the ideas presented by another author.
As a result, you need to make sure you use the right words to support your point. You can strongly prove your arguments when you use properly chosen phrases and paraphrase your content. So, you can strengthen your argument by using the paraphrasing strategy.
How do you paraphrase properly?
- Read and make notes
First, you should read the passage you want to paraphrase online carefully. Mark with a highlighter, underline or take notes on significant words and concepts that you need to keep in mind.
- Use synonyms
Find other words or phrases that mean the same thing as the ones you’ve selected so that you may use them instead. This is what we call a synonym. It will be helpful to use a dictionary or thesaurus or do an internet search for this purpose.
You have to choose synonyms carefully because it is important to maintain the original text’s sense, especially when working with technical or scientific words.
- Change parts of speech.
When using the paraphrasing method, the original nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are changed into new parts of speech. This style of paraphrasing is highly useful for creating a unique piece of writing.
- Change sentence Structure
Changing the structure of the sentence is required for better paraphrasing, which might result in the creation of a passive voice from an active voice or vice versa. You can cut down lengthy sentences into short and short sentences into longer ones. These techniques will give a new look to your content.
What is summarizing?
Summarizing results in a summary is a concise outline of the whole content or argument. You can describe a whole discussion or research paper in a single paragraph, or you can use a series of bullet points to do so while utilizing your own words and approach. Moreover, if you are unable to do that on your own, a summarizer tool can help you in it.
When the original content is lengthy, or when people want only important facts or arguments, then you need to summarize. In summaries, details, and examples that may divert the reader’s attention from the most relevant information are removed. Moreover, complex arguments, syntax, and terminology are reduced to their most basic components using summarizing tools.
Summarizing tools help you generate a summary of your text. A summarizer tool reduces your text up to 20% approx. Concluding your whole content.
When used appropriately, summarizing and paraphrasing will save you time, raise your level of comprehension, and provide you with high-quality content.
Importance of summarizing in research paper
The summary is a piece of content in which you eliminate irrelevant or unimportant text. You need to be able to extract essential points and important arguments in order to make your content the most effective and relevant to your topic. Let’s look at the factors that make summarizing a critical writing skill.
- Extract importance points and arguments
In academia, it is common practice to write a summary of one’s argument and results to extract and express the most important concepts effectively.
You can effectively record your ideas by using summarization, which prevents you from being overwhelmed with the amount of content or losing essential aspects of what you want to say.
It is helpful for readers, especially those who don’t have enough time to read a complete paper. It offers a sufficient amount of information on the topic to enable one to get a more in-depth understanding of the topic.
- Improved credibility of your work
When you summarize your content, not only will it add interest, but it will also provide more credibility to your research paper.
It helps you stay on track while conveying the most important information in a simple and easy-to-read structure. The reader won’t lose interest and skim over or avoid what you’ve written.
- Gives a variety of perspectives on the topic
The skill to summarize offers many perspectives on a topic and is beneficial for a variety of other reasons as well. When you are writing a research paper, it will make managing time easier for you, and it will save you space by compressing ideas without reducing their value to the reader.
In addition, a summary makes it possible for others who aren’t already very knowledgeable about your study field to obtain the information. It broadens our understanding and provides us with fresh ideas.
- Gives access to relevant information
By summarizing, you will be able to present your readers with information that is both relevant and simple to understand. Your whole experience of learning a certain topic will improve as a result.
By summarizing, you are capable of effectively conveying your thoughts and concepts concisely. Readers can easily understand your point of view in a short time.
- Draws attention to the most important points
A book or article should have a summary written of it so that the most important facts and arguments are communicated engagingly. You will achieve this goal by recognizing and discussing significant ideas needed to understand what was said fully.
Summarizing enables readers to understand the important points of an article without having to read the whole text. Anyone may have a better understanding of the important points that are discussed in the text.
This is because the content is condensed into something that is simple for everyone to understand in a short time.
How do you summarize?
- Read content carefully
If you want to be sure that you understand a specific topic, you should read it more than once. Reading is broken up into three phases for maximum effectiveness:
- Skim the article fast to get an idea of its central theme and how it is generally structured.
- Carefully read the article, making sure to underline or highlight anything that’s particularly pertinent, and take notes as you go.
- Review the article once more to ensure that you understand the primary issues, and review any portions that you found especially significant or challenging.
- Separate content into several parts.
Separating the text into its many subsections will make it easier to comprehend its various points and more manageable overall.
Suppose the piece of writing is scientific research that belongs to a typical conceptual model. It has most likely already been structured into clearly recognized sections due to the nature of the research. These sections often consist of an introduction, methods, findings, and discussion.
- Determine the most important points of each section.
It is time to look over each part, identify relevant information, and remove irrelevant data. What information does your reader want in order to comprehend the general argument, as well as the conclusion, presented in the article?
Always remember that providing a summary does not need paraphrasing each paragraph of the original material. Your aim is to get the most important points from the text and write them in your own words.
- Summarize whole content
After fully understanding the most important points that the author wants to convey, the next step is for you to restate these ideas naturally using your own words.
It is crucial to correctly summarize the author’s thoughts in order to prevent plagiarism, and it will show that you have a deep understanding of the topic. You are not permitted to copy and paste any portion of the article, not even just one or two sentences, or to paraphrase the whole content word for word.
Putting aside the article and writing down what you think are the most important points about the topic is the best method to write a summary. You can summarize your ideas in a paragraph or make bullet points. Using bullet points or numbered lists is an appropriate way to write a summary.
Conclusion
Paraphrasing and summarizing are two very important writing skills when writing a research paper. Students must acquire the skills to accurately summarize and paraphrase to write content in their own words.
When you appropriately summarize and paraphrase your content, you can save time, raise your level of understanding, and provide your work with stronger credibility. Many online paraphrasing and summarizing tools will help you write a summary and paraphrase a paragraph while maintaining the original meaning of the content.
