Paraphrasing: Why It Matters and How To Teach It Through Free-Talk, Games, and More

Have you ever noticed that native speakers can usually express the same idea in many different ways? For example, below are some sentences I came up with off the top of my head:

1. “Sally gave Steve a book for his birthday.”
2. “Steve got a book from Sally for his birthday.”
3. “Sally’s birthday present for Steve was a book.”
4. “Sally presented Steve with the gift of a book.”
5. “Sally gifted Steve with a book.”

By contrast, a beginner might struggle to come up with just one more way to say this, let alone four.

As you can see, paraphrasing is a skill! And it’s not important just for showing off. 

Why Paraphrasing Matters

For advanced learners, it means being able to choose the right way to express yourself. 

And for students of all levels, paraphrasing is an essential communication tool, allowing them to say words they don’t know with words they do. In fact, the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines consider paraphrasing an advanced communication skill: 

Advanced High speakers may demonstrate a well-developed ability to compensate for an imperfect grasp of some forms or for limitations in vocabulary by the confident use of communicative strategies, such as paraphrasing. ...

Paraphrasing is also important to being an active listener and a good conversation partner. For example:

• Confirming that you understand someone by saying “It sounds like you’re saying that … " and then putting their thoughts in your own words shows that you are really trying to understand them and not jumping to conclusions.
• You might also paraphrase to emphasize how well you understand what someone has just said. Restating someone’s thoughts and feelings in your own words is a more powerful way of agreeing with them than simply saying “I know how you feel.”

So rather than seeing paraphrases as a reflection of a lack of vocabulary, we should treat it like a skill that needs to be developed — just like grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Now, how can we encourage our students to paraphrase (or paraphrase better)?

Teaching Paraphrase in Conversation

Most of our lessons involve conversation, which is a great opportunity to teach paraphrasing. In fact, it’ll most likely occur without our prompting.

However, when it does occur, we’ll want to point it out. One way to do this is by praising the student for paraphrasing. After all, there’s no better way to encourage new behavior than positive reinforcement!

So make a point to praise paraphrases. You may find this strange. After all, isn’t paraphrasing easy? 

Well, maybe for you, dear proficient speaker of English! But it’s not easy for language learners. 

In fact, the speaking section of the IELTS actually scores test-takers on how well they paraphrase. You’ll notice that each “band” (score) correlates with a student’s paraphrasing ability, starting with “rarely attempts paraphrase” at Band 4 and ending with “uses paraphrase effectively as required” at Band 8:

But how can we tell the difference between paraphrasing “with mixed success” and paraphrasing “effectively”? 

Let’s look at some examples. Imagine if the student in the image had said, “I talked to some people who live near me” (which could mean people who live in the next town) or “I talked to some people near me." Either of those is open to interpretation.

Now, imagine a student is talking about their cat but can’t remember the word “purr.” Which of the following would be the easiest to understand?

1. Student pauses for five seconds and then skips to the next sentence.
2. Student says, “my cat made a noise” 
3. Student says, “my cat made ... the noise that cats make when they feel good.”

I’m sure you’ll agree that the third one is the easiest to understand. 

1. The first one is a failed attempt at communication.
2. The second one is a bit better, but still not effective. After all, we can’t tell if the noise was a meow, a purr, or a hiss. To help the student paraphrase better, we might ask, “Was it a happy or angry noise?”
3. The third one is successful paraphrase, which would also help us tutors provide the right word (“Oh, you mean ‘purr’!”)

So next time a student paraphrases successfully, let’s make a point to praise them or help them do a better job of it before telling them the right word!

Teaching Paraphrasing Separately

There are plenty of ways to teach students to paraphrase outside a conversation. One way is to play Reverse Taboo. 

In standard taboo, each card has a keyword that the player is supposed to explain without using any of the words in the list below. In reverse taboo, you can require the student to use at least some or all of the words from the list to define the keyword.

You can find online taboo cards here.

News articles are also a great tool for learning to paraphrase. They are written in a formal style of writing called “journalese,” which has been called a “parallel universe” from natural conversation by the New York Times. 

Learning to understand journalese is essential to anyone who wants to read the news. However, it’s arguably even more important for foreign language learners to learn how to paraphrase journalese. Otherwise, they’ll start using it in everyday conversation and sound … well, just weird.

So, if your student is not keen on having a conversation today, you can play a game where you take turns paraphrasing a sentence (or paragraph) and have the other person guess which sentence (or paragraph) it is. And what better to use for this game than our own Daily News articles?

With more serious students, however, you can simply go through an article and paraphrase it together. Whatever your student decides on, remind them that the key is to ask themselves, “How would I say this to a friend?”

📌 Takeaways

To sum up, paraphrasing is an important communication tool for foreign language learners. It’s not as great as knowing the perfect word for each situation, but it keeps the conversation going, which is way better than pausing or changing the topic altogether.

So, instead of simply providing our students with “the right word,” let’s make them work for it. Then praise them for paraphrasing and help them get better at it!