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Changing Grammar: The Grammar Toolbox
Of the two main tasks involved in paraphrasing, changing the grammar of a sentence or passage seems to pose the greatest challenge to learners at first. An approach which has proven helpful with my students is employing what I call the Grammar Toolbox. Simply put, as with most tasks, paraphrasing can be more easily accomplished when we use the correct tools, and since the major grammatical elements making up the meaning of most English sentences are the nouns and verbs, the Grammar Toolbox contains forms that are useful in altering/manipulating these elements.
A good tool for manipulating the verbs in a passage is the passive voice. For example,
Congress approved the President's choice of Secretary of State..
becommes...
The President's choice of Secretary of State was approved by Congress..
In making any sentence passive, we must first be able to identify any objects that might be present. Of the three types of objects commonly found in English (direct, indirect, and preposition), direct objects tend to occupy the highest priority. Thus, the question of just how to identify a direct object comes into play here. Fortunately there is a simple question students can ask to accomplish this:
Direct Object Question: What/Who + Subject + Verb?
ex: Tom bought a new bike at BikeMart on Saturday.
What did Tom buy? The answer will be the direct object. [a bike]
This same concept can also be seen in more academic examples.
ex: CDC researchers are developing new techniques to identify and solve important health problems in poor urban communities.
ex: Engineers have created advanced microchips to devise computers with even faster processors.
new techniques to identify and solve important health problems tell us what CDC researchers are developing, and advanced microchips tell us what engineers have created.
The importance of correctly identifying the types of objects can be seen in the following example...
Scientists had analyzed genetic patterns of primates from the University of Delaware..
becomes...
Genetic patterns of primates had been analyzed by scientists from the University of Delaware..
Note that the sentence above cannot be written as...
Genetic patterns of primates from the University of Delaware had been analyzed by scientists.
...without changing the meaning. Why is this the case? essentially, the answer lies in being able to recognize the different types of objects in the sentence (direct and preposition), and in developing an understanding of which words make up these objects. In solving this problem I like to employ the technique of chunks of meaning. We can consider each object as a chunk of meaning which can be identified by asking the right question. Direct objects answer the questions What and sometimes Who while preposition objects answer the questions Where or When. So, "genetic patterns of primates" is a chunk of meaning that tells us What scientists analyzed, while "from the University of Delaware" is another chunk that tells us Where the scientists come from.
Thus, in the sentence above, we can and should separate the two types of objects with the direct object occupying the position directly before the verb.
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