ACADEMIC WRITING YEAR II

Paraphrasing exercises
Below you will find three different exercises so that you can practice paraphrasing and show your skills.
Remember you are trying to avoid three kinds of cheating:
1. Cheating your teacher. Dont fool your teacher (even accidentally) into thinking that you wrote certain
phrases or sentences yourself when it was actually someone else who wrote them; or that you had certain
new ideas when it was actually someone else who thought them first.
2. Cheating yourself. To paraphrase well, you need to a) understand the original passage, and b) have the
ability to express yourself well in writing. If you dont understand the original passage, you arent learning
much from your research. If you dont practice writing others ideas in your own words, you wont increase
your ability to express yourself well in writing. Avoiding plagiarism is a the only way to get the full
educational benefit of writing.
3. Cheating the original writer. Someone did work very hard and put in a lot of effort to write nicesounding, well-written sentences. (Even native English speakers, even professors, need to revise their papers
many many times before they publish the best version.) If you use their sentences as if they are your own,
you are stealing and taking advantage of their hard work, without doing the hard work yourself.
Exercise #1
Read the following passage:
I maintain that to look at an individuals personality, you can do four different things. First, and perhaps
most obviously, you can ask the person directly for her own opinion about what she is like. This is exactly
what personality psychologists usually do. Second, you can find out what other people who know the
person well say about her. Third, you can check on how the person is faring in life. And finally, you can
observe what the person does and try to measure her behavior as directly and objectively as possible.
(Funder, 2010, p. 21)
A. First, while keeping the paragraph in front of you, write down something similar but change the
structure of the paragraph, which should help you understand and summarize the paragraph. This should be
shorter than the original paragraph.
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B. Second, since the above will still have some phrases that are the same as Funders, change all the words
as well (and you might make more changes to the structure too, and make it even shorter). ***Remember
to put in the APA-style in-text citation to indicate where the ideas come from. ***
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Exercise #2
With the below paragraph, try the methods of either looking away and paraphrasing from memory, or
first taking notes and then paraphrasing from those notes. When you take notes, BE CAREFUL that if
you write down any direct quotes, you mark it clearly-- put them inside quotation marks so that you
remember that they are, in fact, direct quotes and not your own words.
This time, pretend you are writing an essay about problems in cross-cultural communication in the
workplace.
People working across different cultures face a common challenge of navigating through deep-seated
cultural variations in cognition, values, and relational styles (for reviews see Fiske, Kitayama, Markus,
& Nisbett, 1998; Prentice & Miller, 1999; Thomas, 2002; Sanchez-Burks & Lee, 2007). For example,
one must adjust for differences in the way people interpret feedback, value social harmony versus
task efficiency, and coordinate differences in opinion. For people working globally, cultural
differences can derail otherwise promising work relations; indeed, 1550% of managers assigned to
work with colleagues abroad curtail their assignments because of an inability to manage cultural
differences (Bird et al., 1993; Copeland & Griggs, 1985; Deshpande & Viswesvaran, 1992; Eschbach,
Parker, & Stoeberl, 2001; Tung, 1987). (Sanchez-Burks, Lee, Nisbett, & Ybarra, 2007, p. 257)

Please write down several drafts of a paraphrase describing the above information. In the end, your
paraphrase should only be about 2 sentences longyou can even try to get it to just be a quick summary of
1 sentence! ***Remember to put in the APA-style in-text citation to indicate where the ideas come
from. ***
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Exercise #3

This is perhaps the most difficult one. How would you paraphrase the below description of the 4 factors of
Cultural IQ, without using any plagiarism or quotes? Pretend you are writing a paper in which you are
describing different authors theories about what Cultural Intelligence is. How would you summarize this
theory, which was described on Linn Van Dynes personal website?:
The Four Factors of Cultural Intelligence (CQ)
CQ-Strategy is how a person makes sense of inter-cultural experiences. It reflects the processes individuals use to acquire
and understand cultural knowledge. It occurs when people make judgments about their own thought processes and those of
others. This includes strategizing before an inter-cultural encounter, checking assumptions during an encounter, and adjusting
mental maps when actual experiences differ from expectations.
CQ-Knowledge is a persons understanding of how cultures are similar and how cultures are different. It reflects general
knowledge structures and mental maps about cultures. It includes knowledge about economic and legal systems, norms for
social interaction, religious beliefs, aesthetic values, and language in different cultures.
CQ-Motivation is a persons interest in experiencing other cultures and interacting with people from different cultures.
Motivational CQ is magnitude and direction of energy applied toward learning about and functioning in cross-cultural
situations. It includes the intrinsic value people place on culturally diverse interactions as well as their sense of confidence
that they can function effectively in settings characterized by cultural diversity.
CQ-Behavior is a persons capability to adapt verbal and nonverbal behavior so it is appropriate for different cultures. It
includes having a flexible repertoire of behavioral responses that are appropriate in a variety of situations and having the
capability to modify both verbal and nonverbal behavior based on those involved in a specific interaction or in a particular
setting. (Van Dyne, 2005-2012).

Note that when you are giving the terms, e.g. CQ-Behavior, you dont need to put quotation marks around
the term, as long as you are introducing it as being a term that Van Dyne uses. Try not to use any direct
quotes.
Please attach several drafts of a paraphrase describing the above information. In the end, your paraphrase
should only be 1-3 sentences long. See if you can do it in one sentence! ***Remember to put in the APAstyle in-text citation to indicate where the ideas come from. ***
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References
Church, A., Katigbak, M. S., Reyes, J. S., Salanga, M. C., Miramontes, L. A., & Adams, N. B. (2008). Prediction and crosssituational consistency of daily behavior across cultures: Testing trait and cultural psychology perspectives. Journal Of
Research In Personality, 42(5), 1199-1215.
Funder, D. (2010). The Personality Puzzle (5th ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co.
Sanchez-Burks, J., Lee, F., Nisbett, R., & Ybarra, O. (2007). Cultural training based on a theory of relational ideology. Basic And
Applied Social Psychology, 29(3), 257-268.
Van Dyne, L. (2005-2012). The Four Factors of Cultural Intelligence (CQ). Retrieved from
http://www.linnvandyne.com/fourfac.html
Wisconsin Writing Center (n.d.). Acknowledging, paraphrasing, and quoting sources. Retrieved from
http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Acknowledging_Sources.pdf
Adapted from:

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