Presentation for Week 4 of the Developing Skills for Work Based Learning pre-entry course: Summarising and paraphrasing

1. Developing Skills for Work Based Learning
Week 4: Summarising and paraphrasing
• The importance of developing your summarising technique
• Examples of summarising text
• Paraphrasing
• How to paraphrase

2. In this session…
• Summarising – what it is and why it matters
• How to summarise
• Example of summarising
• Paraphrasing
• How to paraphrase
• Example of paraphrasing

3. Summarising and paraphrasing
• In Week 1 (Using evidence in writing) we looked at choosing
resources to use as references in assessments.
• In Week 2 (Referencing) we considered ways of using that evidence in
writing to show the basis of putting an academic discussion together.
• In Week 3 (Understanding plagiarism) we discussed the importance of
maintaining academic integrity by ensuring all written work is your
own and properly evidenced.
• The next step in this process, this week, focusses on the process of
extracting information from the sources that you use accurately and
in your own words – the practices of summarising and paraphrasing.

4. Summarising
You may summarise for the following reasons:
• As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
• To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
• To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

5. Summarising
• When you write a summary, it will be purposefully shorter than the
original.
• Summarising is a critical process. It requires you, as a reader, to
decide on the essential, key points of a text that you want to
preserve. You will not include all of the detail of the original.
• The length of the summary will depend on the purpose and format of
your assignment – the summary may be the whole assessment or it
may be a few sentences or paragraph in a literature review.

6. How to summarise
• A summary is a shorter, more concise version of a longer text. You will
use summaries as a way of including evidence in your writing (and
with an associated reference).
• Summarising takes practice. Look for key terms, statistics, definitions
or other parts of a text that make it stand out.
• You could highlight, underline or make notes whilst deciding on which
aspects of a piece of text to focus on (remember you can do this on a
laptop or PC in Word or using a PDF Reader).

7. Example of summarising
Original
The critical issue which must be considered for task communication errors is that they do not
necessarily arise out of the communication process itself; rather in some cases, the communication
process just transmits these errors between communication participants. For example, a control
room operator may be required to take a reading from a display and communicate this to their
supervisor. The incorrect value may be communicated and this would be a task communication
error. However, the error could arise from a faulty meter providing an incorrect reading, an operator
error in reading the meter, or finally an operator communication failure when communicating the
correctly perceived information. It is therefore important to separate task communication errors
where communication failures are involved, and those where task communication errors arise from
errors or failures outside the communication process (Gibson et al, 2006).
Summary
Task communication errors can arise either as part of the communication process or as a result of, for example,
faulty machinery that is outside of the communication process (Gibson et al, 2006).

8. Paraphrasing
• Paraphrasing refers to the process of expressing someone
else's ideas using your own words, while keeping the same
essential meaning and acknowledging the source.
• Paraphrasing is a way of drawing on an author or
researcher’s work, but finding your own way to present their
claims or theory (this is where referencing is even more
essential).
• When you include quotations in an assignment, typically you
may paraphrase some of the content around it, to provide
context.

9. Paraphrasing
• Like summarising, developing your confidence in
paraphrasing takes time and practise.
• You may like to keep a thesaurus handy or use Word’s
synonym function to find alternative words or phrases that
refer to the same thing.
• Although paraphrasing draws on your on vocabulary and
ability to interpret text for inclusion in your assignment, it
does not mean you offer your own opinion.

10. How to paraphrase
• Ensure that you keep the original meaning and maintain the same
relationship between main ideas and supporting points.
• Use synonyms (words or expression which have a similar meaning) where
appropriate. Key words that are specialised subject vocabulary do not need to
be changed.
• If you want to retain unique or specialist phrases, use quotation marks (“ “).
• Change the grammar and sentence structure. Break up a long sentence into
two shorter ones or combine two short sentences into one. Change the voice
(active/passive) or change word forms (e.g. nouns, adjectives).
• Change the order in which information/ideas are presented, as long as they
still make sense in a different order.
https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/paraphrasing-summarising-and-quoting

11. Example of paraphrasing
Original
Safety systems are required on the railway when maintenance personnel work on or near the
railway line. They are primarily used to reduce the risks of personnel coming into contact with
moving trains, and they also help to ensure that trains do not travel over railway infrastructure
which is not safe due to ongoing maintenance. The systems, of which verbal communication is a
prime component, are defined as ‘protection of the line’ in this paper. The procedures underpinning
these systems are primarily specified nationally in the railway industry Rule Book (Gibson et al,
2006).
Paraphrase example 1
The principal role of railway safety systems is to mitigate against injury to employees and to avoid trains using
routes undergoing maintenance (Gibson et al, 2006).
Paraphrase example 2
In Gibson et al’s research (2006), ‘protection of the line’ is a term used to describe railway safety systems.
Gibson et al state that ‘procedures underpinning these systems are primarily specified nationally in the railway
industry Rule Book’ (p. 60).

12. Activity
Please now complete the activity in the Activities folder:
Week 4: Summarising and paraphrasing.