Paraphrasing Techniques: Applied Again!

Culture Shock?

First Indian Student in Dresden

East Germany (1951)

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm still busy preparing materials to teach Korean students how to paraphrase, but I wanted to go beyond the rather mechanical method that I was using two days ago in "Paraphrasing Techniques: Applied!" I use some of those same techniques, of course, but I also introduce the strategy of "Thorough Rewriting." You'll see what I mean in this lesson plan:

Original passage on "Culture Shock":

Note that this original passage would be a direct quote and would thus need to be put into long-quote form (block-quote form), which would mean indenting it as a block:

Moving to a new country can be an exciting, even exhilarating experience. In a new environment, you somehow feel more alive: seeing new sights, eating new food, and hearing the foreign sounds of a new language. Soon, however, this sensory bombardment becomes sensory overload. Suddenly, new experiences seem stressful rather than stimulating, and delight turns into discomfort. This is the phenomenon known as culture shock. Culture shock is more than jet lag or homesickness, and it affects nearly everyone who enters a new culture -- tourists, business travelers, diplomats, and students alike. Although not everyone experiences culture shock in exactly the same way, many experts agree that it has roughly five stages. (Oshima & Hogue, 2006, p. 47)

Note the position of the period. After a long quote, continue the paragraph, so don't indent. Don't forget the bibliographical entry that comes at the end of the paper in the References section:

Oshima, A., & Hogue, A. (2006). Writing academic English (4th ed). White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman.

Note that when one begins paraphrasing, the passage is no longer a quote and would not be put into block-quote form.

Let's now apply the paraphrasing techniques that we have learned, much as we did last time, along with some paraphrasing strategies, e.g., reordering and rewriting, that we have also learned about and used:

Take the first sentence of the passage and apply some of these techniques to its parts:

"Moving to a new country can be an exciting, even exhilarating experience."

Let's first use "Technique Number 1" (synonyms). Let's apply this technique to the word "country," choosing from a list of synonyms: nation, state, land, commonwealth, kingdom, realm, sovereign state. If we use "land," we get:

Moving to a new land can be an exciting, even exhilarating experience.

This is no longer an exact quote, so we don't use quotation marks, but it is still too close to the original and thus constitutes plagiarism rather than a good paraphrase. If we look carefully, we see that we can rewrite this sentence by radically cutting away excess verbiage, a step toward thorough rewriting:

A new land can be exhilarating.

Note that we've also used "Technique Number 2" (word forms) in changing "exhilarating" from an adjective to a verb, though perhaps the change is from attributive to predicate adjective. Anyway, this shortened form will work fine if the context makes clear that one is speaking of moving to a different country. But we could also add a couple of words in our process of rewriting:

Living in a new land can be exhilarating.

This says about the same thing as the sentence did before the changes, but it differs greatly in form, thus approaching the aim of a paraphrase: "same meaning, different form." We might as well change "exhilarating" by finding synonyms for "exhilarate": excite, delight, cheer, thrill, stimulate, animate, exalt, lift, enliven, invigorate, gladden, elate, or inspirit. Let's use "invigorate," and change "new" as well:

Living in a different land can be invigorating.

This is a rather thorough rewriting achieved largely through cutting and adding words, along with substituting synonyms. Let's now turn to the next sentence:

In a new environment, you somehow feel more alive: seeing new sights, eating new food, and hearing the foreign sounds of a new language.

Here, we see that we can cut the first clause, for it essentially repeats the meaning already given in the first sentence:

. . . seeing new sights, eating new food, and hearing the foreign sounds of a new language.

But this is a sentence fragment, so let's connect it to the first sentence:

Living in a different land can be invigorating . . . seeing new sights, eating new food, and hearing the foreign sounds of a new language.

But these need a connecting expression. Let's add "because of" or "through" since the relationship is likely causal, and these prepositions bring in "Technique Number 3" (clause to phrase). Let's also cut more words:

Living in a different land can be invigorating through the new sights, new food, and new language.

That looks quite good, so let's move to the nest sentence:

Soon, however, this sensory bombardment becomes sensory overload.

We can easily employ "Technique Number 7" (change transitions):

But soon, this sensory bombardment becomes sensory overload.

And we can smooth this sentence out by moving "soon" to get rid of a comma:

But this sensory bombardment soon becomes sensory overload.

What we now have looks like a candidate for some synonym work. Let's first replace "bombardment": bombing, attack, fire, assault, shelling, blitz, barrage, flak, strafe, fusillade, or cannonade. We have a problem. These all sound negative, but something positive was meant by the invigorating new sights, food, and language. The word "bombardment" must have been used in a metaphorical sense, but we can't be sure that a synonym will work that way, so let's rely on our imagination here. Since the sights, food, and language are all invigorating, they could be described as delightful, so let's use "delight." We also need an antonym for "delight" to correspond to "overload": dissatisfaction, distaste, displeasure, disfavour, or disapprobation. Let’s use "displeasure." And what can we do about "sensory"? We could just delete it. These changes give us:

But this delight soon becomes displeasure.

Note that we can attach this sentence to the previous one, and we can also adjust some word forms ("Technique Number 2") for a more thorough rewriting:

Living in a different land can be invigorating through the new sights, new food, and new language, but these delights soon become displeasing.

Let's turn to the next sentence:

Suddenly, new experiences seem stressful rather than stimulating, and delight turns into discomfort.

If we think carefully, we see that this sentence repeats some of what has been said already ("suddenly" repeats "soon"; "new experiences" repeats "new sights, new food, and new language"; and "delight turns into discomfort" repeats "these delights . . . become displeasing"), so let's trim it and add what remains to the previous sentence:

Living in a different land can be invigorating through the new sights, new food, and new language, but these delights soon become displeasing -- stressful rather than stimulating.

We now see that we can replace "stressful" with a synonym: worrying, anxious, tense, trying, hard, taxing, demanding, wearing, tough, draining, exhausting, exacting, traumatic, agitating, or nerve-racking. Let's use "exhausting," partly because it's opposed to "invigorating." And we can replace "stimulating" with a synonym: inspiring, prompting, urging, spurring, arousing, animating, rousing, prodding, quickening, whetting, or impelling. Let's choose "animating" since it's similar to "invigorating." We now have:

Living in a different land can be invigorating through the new sights, new food, and new language, but these delights soon become displeasing -- exhausting rather than animating.

Let's remind ourselves of what remains to be paraphrased (still using the long-quote form know as a block quote):

This is the phenomenon known as culture shock. Culture shock is more than jet lag or homesickness, and it affects nearly everyone who enters a new culture -- tourists, business travelers, diplomats, and students alike. Although not everyone experiences culture shock in exactly the same way, many experts agree that it has roughly five stages. (Oshima & Hogue, 2006, p. 47)

Rather than go through this line by line, let me show the passage transformed (which wouldn't be a long quote in block form, incidentally, and the period moves to a new position):

This is culture shock, which is neither merely jet lag nor homesickness, and it strikes almost everybody who lingers in an unfamiliar culture. Although culture shock differs from individual to individual, the experience has about five phases (Oshima & Hogue, 2006, p. 47).

Can you identify the changes? Let's work as a class . . .

[The class works together.]

. . . Let's now put the entire passage down for viewing:

Living in a different land can be invigorating through the new sights, new food, and new language, but these delights soon become displeasing -- exhausting rather than animating. This is culture shock, which is neither merely jet lag nor homesickness, and it strikes almost everybody who lingers in an unfamiliar culture. Although culture shock differs from individual to individual, the experience has about five phases (Oshima & Hogue, 2006, p. 47).

That's a pretty good paraphrase.

And that's what I've prepared for tomorrow's lesson on paraphrase, intended for about 10 students but now burdening the world.