Your professors want you to ingest and synthesize what you learn in your readings and research, then share answers that reflect your new knowledge and understanding.
To do so successfully, you'll have to make time to read, take independent notes, and translate your notes into answers that summarize the informational sources you read--while also citing those sources correctly. (Yes -- you always, for any college work, in any class subject, must give credit to the sources where you gained your information, whether you're summarizing, paraphrasing, or directly quoting those sources. Click the tabs at left for details about how to cite sources correctly in MLA style.)
Here are some tips on how to better summarize the information you find:
| 5 Steps to Effective Paraphrasing |
| 1. Read the original passage or source several times until you feel you fully understand it. |
| 2. Imagine how you would explain this passage verbally to someone who had not read it. |
| 3. Put the passage aside and write/type it in your own words. |
| 4. Check your version with the original. Make sure that the structure of your version and that of the original are different. Make sure that you have not used any of the distinct wording from the original. If you have, and cannot think of how else to phrase these words, place quotation marks around them. |
| 5. Once you feel you have a strong paraphrase—one that is worded and structured differently from the original—place a properly formatted parenthetical, in-text citation after it. |
These tips are borrowed from this helpful document at The College of St. Rose Writing Center. Click to review the full document, which also shares examples of poor paraphrasing (in which the structure of source sentences isn't changed, and a couple synonyms are substituted for original words) and of better paraphrasing (fully new wording and new structuring of source ideas), in a number of different citation styles.