Section 3.1: Selecting the information to paraphrase

The first technique in paraphrasing is to select the information you need for your essay. There is no point in paraphrasing a whole paragraph if only some parts of it are relevant to you. Therefore, in this section, you will be deciding on your aim and selecting the part of the text that meets your aim.

Study the following example of selecting the relevant information then attempt the exercises. You can check the answers as you go.

Example

Suppose you are writing an essay about statistical methods for making predictions in business. You find the following passage in a book:

Collaboration between our team and statisticians at Stanford and Birmingham universities has detected a flaw in the statistical method customarily used. This deviance, which has passed unnoticed for the last 45 years, routinely results in overestimation of the future performance of medium-sized and larger companies and, conversely, underestimation of the future performance of small companies.

Your aim is to include only information about the kinds of errors that customary statistical methods may create. Therefore, you select only the following parts to paraphrase, crossing out the rest:

Collaboration between our team and statisticians at Stanford and Birmingham universities has detected a flaw in the statistical method customarily used. This deviance, which has passed unnoticed for the last 45 years, routinely results in overestimation of the future performance of medium-sized and larger companies and, conversely, underestimation of the future performance of small companies.

 

Paraphrasing  
Exercise 1