In your own writing, the most common way of referring to the ideas of another writer is by paraphrasing them. Quotations are found less often and the use of paraphrasing has several advantages associated with it.
What do you think are the advantages of paraphrasing over quotation? Make a few notes in the box below and then check the answer.
In these activities you will evaluate two paraphrases produced by student writers and then practise paraphrasing yourself.
Two students, Chen and Sumei, are writing essays on 'The Role of Stakeholders in Companies' for their business studies course. They both want to refer to some of the key points made by the writer of the text below, which focuses on the interest that governments have in business enterprises.
Read the text and compare it with the two paragraphs written by Chen and Sumei, paraphrasing the writer's main points. Which student has produced a better paraphrase?
Governments have interests in companies for a variety of reasons. Firms provide the economic basis of the society and are both nourished and regulated by government with the intent of keeping the economy healthy enough to sustain the society and, of course, the government. Government may attempt to control the harms of business activity to other members of society. In some societies, government runs the economy via central planning mechanisms and state ownership of enterprise. The role of government is so important, in fact, that we have already devoted chapter 3 to it.
Chen's paragraph:
Wartick and Wood (1998:103) point out that governments can have a wide range of interests in companies, from supporting them in order to help the economy, to regulating them in order to stop them harming the rest of society.
Sumei's paragraph:
According to Wartick and Wood (1998), governments have interests for a variety of reasons. They are both nourished and regulated by government, in order to keep the economy healthy enough to sustain the society. On the other hand, the government may also attempt to control the harms of business activity to others in society. In some countries there is a centralised economy, which the government runs..
What helped you to decide which of the two paragraphs contained the better paraphrase? From the following list identify what the writer of the better paraphrase does.
Select the tick symbol next to those actions that the writer does and the cross symbol next to those that he does not do.
Removes unusual words
Uses the same sentence structure as the original paragraph
Keeps the paraphrase as simple as possible
Expresses the points concisely
Always uses the same words as the original
Expresses the main ideas in his own words
Copies useful pieces of the original text
Now look again at Sumei's paragraph below and identify the problems in her paraphrase. Then read the comment.
According to Wartick and Wood (1998), governments have interests for a variety of reasons. They are both nourished and regulated by government, in order to keep the economy healthy enough to sustain the society. On the other hand, the government may also attempt to control the harms of business activity to others in society. In some countries there is a centralised economy, which the government runs..
Xin Lu is writing a report about the design and development of customer satisfaction programmes.
He wants to support his own argument using the following ideas that he found in his source material and he plans to incorporate the main points using paraphrase.
Look at the four short extracts from Xin Lu's source material, and try to do the following:
1. In analysing the results of numerous surveys of companies' experiences of customer satisfaction programmes between 1997 and 2002, is apparent that in the majority of cases, the negatives outweighed the positives. This is particularly marked among companies who sent customers an "off-the-shelf" survey, or one from another company. In approximately 85% of these cases, the results were considered to be unsatisfactory.
2. The importance to a company of developing its own programme to measure satisfaction cannot be overemphasised. Indeed, this seems to have been the keystone of all successful programmes.
3. The process of development of any customer satisfaction programme is a tentative one and even allowing for experienced development teams and careful planning, there is likely to be a need for review and revision during the process. The input of front-line members of staff should be seen as a vital part of the process and may inform necessary modifications as well as enhancements to be made to the programme.
4. During the implementation stage of most successful programmes, the process was familiar to the majority of employees. They were encouraged by senior management to report customer satisfaction information via internal communication channels, and suggestions on possible improvements were acknowledged and rewarded through recognition and personnel rewards.