Linguistic, scientific, and literary assignment writing often require the students to understand previous works from different sources and present them in their own words. Sometimes, these students are prompted to seek assignment writing help to learn to write others’ work in their own words. Presenting other scholars’ ideas in one’s words and phrases is not a simple task, yet with proper learning and practice, you can master it.
This blog post discusses the two most common methods of integrating other people’s ideas in your own words. These methods include summarizing their work and paraphrasing. Besides these two techniques, we also use direct quotes from other people’s writing in academic writing. However, quoting others’ work is simple and doesn’t require much work or understanding. You only need to learn the formatting resources to quote text adequately.
Let’s learn the art and science of summarizing and paraphrasing as well as the differences between these techniques.
What is Summarizing assignment writing
Summarizing a passage includes only expressing its key points concisely to reduce the length of the whole passage considerably.
The primary purpose of summarizing a assignment writing help to text is to reduce its size without losing out on important pieces of information. You need to keep the summary short but simple without unnecessary words or phrases. However, you cannot miss any key piece of information while doing it. Usually, this technique is carried out to convey information efficiently and completely.
What is Paraphrasing?
Paraphrasing is the act of presenting a passage in one’s own words without skipping points or shortening the length of the passage. When you paraphrase, you are allowed to add your viewpoint to the passage. However, you must be clear where the thoughts of the original author end and where do yours begin.
The passage of paraphrasing is to alter the presentation of someone else’s work to make it suitable for your audience. You can make the passage easier or more complex to suit your readers’ style or you can add your tone and style to it. However, you must not forget to add credit to these works. Most researchers and students paraphrase only to make the text easier and simpler for their readers. Remember that paraphrasing must convey the essence of the original work without altering it.
Differences between Summarizing and Paraphrasing
Do these definitions of summarizing and paraphrasing leave you even more confused about these terms? Fret not. Here are the key differences between these techniques.
Length
The first and most obvious difference between these two techniques is the length of the passage. The purpose of summarization is to shorten the text. The length of the summarized passage will depend on the length of the original passage as well as the number of key pieces of information one can learn from it.
On the contrary, paraphrased pieces of text aren’t always shorter than the original pieces. don’t get me wrong, they can be shorter if the writer wants them to be, but it’s not necessary. They can be shorter, equal, or longer than the original text.
Meaning of the Passage
The purpose of summarization is to maintain and emphasize the meaning of the passage. It highlights the core meaning making it easier to grasp while eliminating the noise.
Paraphrasing also seeks to maintain the meaning of the text. However, you are allowed to present it with your unique spin. You don’t have to capture the essence of the passage with your words and phrases of the paraphrased text.
Purpose
Summaries are created to introduce a topic to a reader or to present it to a busy person who cannot read the whole passage. In the academic world, it is used to test students’ understanding of a particular topic.
Paraphrasing is used for presenting complex topics. The purpose is not to simplify it or make it time-saving for the intended readers. Here, the focus remains on comprehension of the topic. While paraphrasing, you must consider the understanding level of your readers and present the topic in a language and tone that is appealing to them.
In short, when you paraphrase, you must deliver the information with as much depth or more to the readers. Skimming is a technique that is reserved only for summarization, paraphrasing doesn’t entertain any part of this technique.
Additional Details
Summarization prohibits the addition of details and information to the text. You must keep it short. On the other hand, paraphrasing allows this addition. While paraphrasing, you can not only write additional information regarding the topic but can also share the whole topic from your angle instead of its original presentation.
Difficulty Level
Both summarizing and paraphrasing require you to understand the topic, but paraphrasing is more robust than summarizing. Many students avoid seeking assignment writing help by resorting to giving a shallow reading of the text and summarizing only those points that they can understand. While doing so, they conveniently ignore other pieces of information from the text which are oftentimes just as important.
You can see from this example, that summarizing is a great method of learning that comes with some drawbacks. Unlike summarization, paraphrasing doesn’t afford such shortcuts. If you are given a paraphrasing assignment, you must understand the whole passage, write it in your own words, and also add to it to make it more meaningful or relevant to the topic.
Wrapping Up
Most college and university writing assignments require students to study the topic from different sources and write the information they have collected and understood as essays, research papers, or reports. For most students, the hardest part of such assignments appears as giving their own words to the works they have studied. These students should seek professional assignment writing help to learn how to summarize and paraphrase their studies correctly.
For starters, this blog post mentions the two techniques, what they are, and how they are different from each other. In short, summarization is the process of shortening a passage by only writing down important pieces of information from it. paraphrasing is different because you don’t shorten the passage, but present it in its entirety in a manner that makes it more understandable and relevant.
