Paraphrasing in Academic Writing of L2 Learners: Strategies, Challenges, and Pedagogical Implications

Abstract

Paraphrasing is a very important skill in academic writing. This study aims to explore the learners’ paraphrasing strategies and the challenges they encounter in paraphrasing as novice writers in academic writing. The participants were 53 students who studied English academic writing. The students’ paraphrasing source sentence task was collected and analysed, examining the strategies the students relied on. They also responded to a set of questionnaires enquiring about challenges they encountered when completing the paraphrasing task. The analysis of the students’ paraphrasing task showed that vocabulary substitution together with the changing order of sentences was the most commonly used strategy while the strategy of vocabulary substitution together with changing word order and changing word class was the least practised by the students. The areas of challenge in their paraphrasing included the students’ limited vocabulary knowledge, the inappropriate use of vocabulary in context, and inadequate understanding of the reading text. Pedagogical activities that can help improve the students’ paraphrasing skill were presented in this study. The findings provide useful insights into teaching paraphrasing skills which can help the teachers of academic writing better train their students in paraphrasing.