Sentence Level Paraphrasing Practice

Dear Students,

Please complete the paraphrasing exercise below and share/discuss your answers on the blog. Sample answers will be posted on Wednesday, December 12.

The following exercise is based on the passage “Why People Don’t Help in a Crisis” by John
Darley and Bibb Latané. You may view the full text associated with this exercise at the following link:

http://www.ucop.edu/dws/essays/subject_a.htm

You may view examples of acceptable and unacceptable paraphrases at this site. It also gives some examples of poorly written (patch-work) paraphrases.

http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_paraphrase.html

PRE-PARAPHRASING: EXERCISE

Directions: Rewrite each of the sentences below using the words in parentheses. Look first for the part of the original sentence that will need to be replaced. Find the subject of any verbs—who is doing what?—and make any necessary grammatical changes. Make any other changes (i.e., vocabulary) as needed.

1. People trying to interpret a situation often look at those around them to see how to react. (base reactions on)

2. There are three things bystanders must do if they are to intervene in an emergency. (necessary)

3. In a crowd, then, each person is less likely to notice a potential emergency than when alone. (tends to....less)

4. Even if a person defines an event as an emergency...(decides)

5. ... the presence of other bystanders may still make each person less likely to intervene. (may feel less inclined)

After completing the sentence-level exercise above, practice writing paraphrases at the paragraph level by completing practice exercise 2 in the text book (pages 132 - 134.) Alternatively, you may select paragraphs of personal interest from others sources and attempt to paraphrase those.

Please submit your paraphrased versions of these paragraphs along with the originals for grading on Friday, December14.

Happy Blogging!