MTTC Upper Elementary (3–6) Education – Literacy (122) Practice Test

Paraphrasing in student writing means restating someone else’s ideas in your own words and giving proper credit to the original source. This shows you’ve understood the material well enough to express it with your own voice while still acknowledging where it came from with a citation. By rewriting ideas rather than copying them exactly, you integrate evidence into your argument and demonstrate your own understanding, which is the goal of paraphrasing. Copying text verbatim without attribution is plagiarism and violates academic integrity. Quoting without any paraphrase doesn’t demonstrate how to restate ideas in your own words, and ignoring sources entirely ignores the need to credit authors and support your claims.