The Effect of Proficiency and Task Type on the Use of Paraphrase Type in Writing among Iranian EFL University Students

Academic writers use paraphrasing as an important borrowing strategy when integrating source text into their writing. To have a better understanding of L2 university students’ paraphrasing strategies, the present study examines how language proficiency and the type of writing task (summary tasks vs. opinion tasks) affect students’ use of paraphrase type: near copy, minimal revision, moderate revision, and substantial revision. The participants of the study were 127 EFL learners at 3 different levels of proficiency (44 advanced, 42 high intermediate, and 41 low intermediate). They were given a text based on which they were asked to do a writing task. In each proficiency group, half of the participants were asked to summarize the source text (ie., to do a summary task) and the other half were required to write their opinions about the text (i.e., to do an opinion task). The assignment of the tasks to individuals was done randomly. The participants’ use of attempted paraphrases within the summary and opinion tasks was compared. It was found that the advanced group used more attempted paraphrases in their writing. In addition, the participants who did the summary task used more attempted paraphrases than those who did the opinion task. Furthermore, low and high intermediate groups used more near copies than the advanced group. Conversely, the advanced participants used more minimal, moderate, and substantial revisions than the other two groups. However, task type appeared to have no effect on the use of paraphrase type