Use synonyms

The first way is to use synonyms to replace the words in the original text. Here
is an example:

Original sentence: The position of women in the society has changed

greatly in the past 20 years.

Paraphrased sentence: The social status of female has dramatically

changed in the last two decades.

As you can see, status, female, dramatically, last and two decades are
used to replace position, women, greatly, past and 20 years.

Change the part of speech

The part of speech refers to different types of words such as nouns, verbs,
pronouns and adjectives. Changing the part of speech of a word can help you
to paraphrase the text. In the previous example, social (adj.) is used to
replace society (n.). Below is another way to paraphrase that sentence.

Paraphrased sentence: The social status of female has undergone a great

change in the last two decades.

Here we can use a great (adj.) change (n.) instead of change (v.) greatly
(adv.) to show the same meaning of the original sentence.

Change sentence structure

Another way to paraphrase is to change the sentence structure. For instance,
you can alter the word order of a sentence or make two sentences into one.
Here is an example.

Original text: His phone was stolen last week. Therefore, he was worried
about the leak of his personal and bank information.

Paraphrased sentence: He was afraid that his personal and bank

information would be leaked out because his phone was stolen a few
days ago.
The example text are two simple sentences. We can combine them by using
subordinating conjunction ‘because’.

In the IELTS test, you may use a mixture of paraphrase strategies to help you
get a higher score. Here are some sentences from IELTS Academic writing
questions for you to practice.

1.The table and chart show the time spent at leisure and household activities i
n 2008.

2.Some people think that the amount of noise people make should be
controlled strictly, while other say that people are free to make as much noise
as they wish.

Keys:

1. We can see how people distribute their time on leisure and household
activities in 2008 from the table and chart.

2. Some people claim that it is people’s right to make as much noise as they
want. However, others think that there should be strict control over the amount
of the noise.

Note: The keys offer possible ways to paraphrase the original sentence. Your
answers don’t have to be exactly the same.