An Analysis of Paraphrasing Experienced by English Students in Academic Writing

Paraphrasing is considered as one of the major skills for academic writing. It is one of the techniques in using others’ ideas which needs to be accomplished by the students in performing experts’ ideas in conducting a writing product for academic purposes. However, most of the students of Department of English Language Education still encounter problems in paraphrasing. One of the problems faced by students is lack of understanding toward paraphrasing which involved the criteria of an acceptable paraphrasing. Therefore, to expand understanding about the students’ strategies in paraphrasing, the present study investigate the students strategies and the obstacles they encounter. The objectives of this study are to identify English students’ strategies in paraphrasing and to investigate the kinds of obstacle they encounter. The study is conducted at Department of English Language Education of UIN Ar-Raniry of Banda Aceh. The participants of the study are the sixth semester students of unit 2 who have studied academic writing subject which consisted of 29 students. The study is conducted by applying a mix method research which involves writing task and questionnaire as the techniques of data collections used. The findings of the research reveal that most of the participants (32%) consider to use minimal revision as the strategy in paraphrasing the text, followed by 28% of the participant who use near copy as their strategy in paraphrasing. Then, 22% of the participants who apply moderate revision and only few participants (18%) who greatly apply substansial revision as the strategy of paraphrasing. The obstacles they encounter in paraphrasing are: the students find difficulty in comprehending the source text, changing the syntax and structure and finding the keywords and keypoints in the source text. In addition, in paraphrasing the source text, using own words to express the ideas of another’s work and cite the source indicated as the most difficulty in paraphrasing. Besides, the study reveals that changing the syntaxs and structure are consider as the second difficulty in paraphrasing. However, only few participants who report that substituting synonyms for words as the most difficulty in paraphrasing. In conclusion, the study suggests that there is a need for the lecturers and students to put emphasis on the students’ comprehension skill and provide the appropriate materials regarding to paraphrasing strategies to increase the students’ knowledge of the acceptable paraphrasing strategies