Thesis and Dissertation Writing in a Second Language: a handbook for Supervisors

Application: paraphrasing
Ask your student to take a small section of text from their reading and
paraphrase it using the techniques of changing the word, changing the
word class, and changing the word order.

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Avoiding plagiarism
A number of authors have discussed the issue of plagiarism in academic writ-
ing. Pennycook (1996), for example, argues that plagiarism, for
second-language students especially, is not a simply black-and-white affair
that can be prevented by threats, warnings and admonitions. In his view:
All language learning is to some extent a process of borrowing others’
words and we need to be flexible, not dogmatic, about where we draw
boundaries between acceptable or unacceptable textual borrowings.
(Pennycook 1996: 227)
Some have argued that plagiarism is a culture-specific western concept.
Others, such as Liu (2005), have argued that plagiarism is just as unaccept-
able in countries such as China as it is in the west. China, for example, has
recently set up a website called New Threads (www.xys.org) which discusses,
among other things, the topic of academic misconduct. One of the topics dis-
cussed on this site is the issue of plagiarism. In Liu’s view, one of the reasons
second-language students may plagiarize is their lack of language proficiency
and writing skills, not their lack of awareness of the unacceptability of this
practice. As Canagarajah (2002: 155) puts it, all texts are, indeed, ‘intertexts’
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Writing the background chapters
Table 7.6 Techniques for paraphrasing and summary writing
Technique
Examples of the technique
Examples in a sentence
Changing the word
Change studies to research
Change Sleep scientists have 
Change society to civilization
found that traditional 
Change mud to deposits
remedies for insomnia, such 
as counting sheep, are 
ineffective to
Sleep researchers have found
that established cures for 
insomnia, for instance 
counting sheep, do not work.
Changing the 
Change Egypt (noun) to
Change A third group was 
word class
Egyptian (adjective)
given no special instructions 
Change Mountainous regions 
about going to sleep to
(adjective + noun) to in the
A third group was not 
mountains (noun)
specially instructed about 
going to sleep
Changing the word 
Change Ancient Egypt 
Change There are many 
order
collapsed to the collapse of 
practical applications to 
Egyptian society began
research into insomnia to
Research into insomnia has 
many practical applications
Source: based on Bailey 2003

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and behind all knowledge ‘lies not physical reality but other texts, followed
by other texts’ as well as others’ (often contestable) views rather than ‘imper-
sonal and absolute truths’ (Abasi et al. 2006: 114). Students, thus, need to
learn how ‘to borrow other people’s texts and words’ so they will be able to
achieve their rhetorical and intellectual goals (Canagarajah 2002: 156) as well
as make it clear the work they are presenting is their own, not someone else’s.
Good paraphrasing and summarizing strategies are a key way in which sec-
ond-language writers can learn to do this (see Abasi et al. 2006 for further
discussion of this).