Paraphrasing Skill of EED Students of UMK: A Preliminary Error Analysis

It is nearly impossible to prepare an academic composition without taking ideas from others. To take outside ideas as well as to avoid doing plagiarism, there are three important ways; quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing. This paper is to examine paraphrasing skill of the students of EED UMK of Academic Writing Class in the academic year 2012/2013 of semester V. This small-scale investigation is basically a preliminary study before an upcoming action research to improve students paraphrasing skills. It is to address the following questions: (1) To what extent are the meanings of the original texts maintained in the students’ paraphrases? (2) To what extent do the students’ paraphrases have similar wording as the original passage? (3) Are there some grammatical (and lexical) errors/mistakes found in students’ paraphrases? (4) Do the students include the source(s) of citations for the paraphrases? This descriptive study analyzes 25 paraphrases done by the students. This preliminary analysis reveals that, there are still many weaknesses found in students’ paraphrases. Maintaining the meaning of original passages and using their own words in paraphrases is still a serious concern of both students and instructors. Moreover, the grammatical and lexical errors are still found in nearly all paraphrases. However, the students have also good points in that they have various sources of citation and they have acquired a good practice of citation by mentioning the sources when taking ideas from others. An action plan is waiting to improve students’ writing skill, especially promoting students’ paraphrasing skill