Paraphrasing in English
Paraphrasing with noun phrases
A subject or object can be just one noun. In academic texts, however, such subjects and objects can become more complex noun phrases. In order to express ourselves more efficiently, we try to give additional information about a subject. For adding information or changing the original structure of our source we can use
- appositions (nouns in commas after the subject)
- participle phrases (-ed-phrases, ing-phrases)
- relative clauses
Let's have a look at our example. Let's say we intended to introduce our paraphrase by giving some information about the author.
Foer lives with his family in Brooklyn/USA.
He does first-person, on-site research.
He wrote Everything is Illuminated.
It won the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award.
He edited A Convergence of Birds.
He published our book Eating Animals in 2009.
It is a non-fictional work.
It seeks to answer the question whether we should stop eating animals.
I will go through it step-by-step now. First we write our main sentence.
Jonathan Safran Foer published Eating Animals in 2009.
Then we can add an apposition to explain the type of book.
Jonathan Safran Foer published Eating Animals in 2009, a non-fictional work.
After that we can add a participle phrase explaining the purpose of the work.
Jonathan Safran Foer published Eating Animals in 2009, a non-fictional work seeking to answer the question whether we should stop eating animals.
We can now go on to introduce the sentence with a temporal partiple clause.
Living with his family in Brooklyn/USA, Jonathan Safran Foer published Eating Animals in 2009, a non-fictional work seeking to answer the question whether we should stop eating animals.
We insert an apposition before his name. We do not need to separate this apposition with a comma as it is restrictive, i.e. it defines this Jonathan Safran Foer (maybe there is a second one that is not a researcher).
Living with his family in Brooklyn/USA, the first-person on-site researcher Jonathan Safran Foer published Eating Animals in 2009, a non-fictional work seeking to answer the question whether we should stop eating animals.
Now we can insert additional information in the form of a series of non-restrictive relative clauses. We have to separate them off with commas, as they are non-restrictive, i.e. merely additional information.
Living with his family in Brooklyn/USA, the first-person researcher Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote Everything is Illuminated, which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and who also edited A Convergence of Birds, published Eating Animals in 2009, a non-fictional work seeking to answer the question whether we should stop eating animals.
In his study Foer (2009, 149) claims that the fact that people usually eat together with others increases the complexity of our choices of food. A great influence is exerted on our choice of food by dinner companionship.
Now you have seen how to work with appositions, participle phrases and relative clauses. If you wish, you can do the exercise below and practise inserting additional information into sentences.
Integrate the following information into the sentence.