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Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting

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Summary:

These resources provide lesson plans and handouts for teachers interested in teaching students how to avoid plagiarism. The resources ask students to practice summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. The resources with titles that include "Handout" provide handouts that are free to print for your students by using the print option in your web browser. The "Handout" resources correspond with the resource listed above it.

Time Estimate

10 minutes


Objective

Activate students’ schemata regarding the similarities and differences among summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting.


Materials

Chalkboard/whiteboard

Computer Lab Option Materials

Digital projector


Procedure

  1. Write the words Summarizing, Paraphrasing and Quoting along the top of the whiteboard.

  2. Elicit from students the rules they know related to each writing strategy.

  3. Add additional information as needed. The board may appear as follows:

Summarizing

Paraphrasing

Quoting
  • Must reference the original source
  • The text is much shorter than the original text. (For example, one may write a single page to summarize a four-page article.)
  • Must use your own words, usually with a very limited use of quotations.
  • Must reference the original source
  • The text produced may be shorter or longer than the original text
  • Must use your own words
  • Must reference the original source
  • The text produced is the exact length of the original text quoted (unless ellipses are used)
  • Use the original author’s exact words
  • Put quotation marks around the original author’s exact words
  • Include the page number of the original source from which you borrowed the author’s original language.
Computer Lab Option

Rather than using the whiteboard, one may choose to open up and project the above table in a word processing program, like Microsoft Word, completing the table as answers are elicited from students.