Paraphrasing for IELTS & TOEFL: Stop Copying the Prompt

Why paraphrasing matters to your score

Examiners reward the ability to express an idea flexibly (Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range). When you open a Task 2 essay or a TOEFL response by reusing the prompt's exact words, you demonstrate the opposite — and copied words may be discounted from your word count. A clean paraphrase in the first sentence sets a higher tone immediately.

The three paraphrasing tools

• Synonyms (carefully). "Children" → "young people"; "important" → "crucial". But only swap words you're sure of — a wrong synonym ("affect/effect", odd collocations) hurts more than the original.
• Change the word form. "Pollution is increasing" → "There has been an increase in pollution"; "Governments should fund…" → "Government funding for… is necessary." Shifting noun↔verb↔adjective is often safer than hunting synonyms.
• Change the structure. Turn active into passive, split or combine clauses, or reorder ("Although X, Y" → "Y, even though X"). Structural change is what separates real paraphrasing from word-swapping.

A worked example

Prompt: "Some people think that universities should provide students with free education."

Weak (word-swap only): "Some persons believe that colleges should give pupils free schooling." — clumsy synonyms, same structure.

Strong: "It is sometimes argued that higher education should be funded entirely by the state rather than paid for by students." — different word forms ("funded by the state"), changed structure (passive + contrast), meaning preserved.

Where to use it (and where not to)

• Use it: the introduction (rephrase the topic), topic sentences, and TOEFL responses that reference a reading/lecture.
• Don't over-paraphrase key terms that have no natural synonym — "climate change", "the internet", proper nouns. Forcing a synonym there reads worse than repeating the word.
• Never change the meaning to fit a fancier word. Accuracy beats vocabulary.

Common mistakes

• Thesaurus-dumping — using rare words incorrectly.
• Only swapping synonyms while keeping the identical structure (graders spot this).
• Paraphrasing words that shouldn't be changed (technical/proper terms).
• Distorting the meaning to show off vocabulary.

Practise with feedback

Paraphrasing is easy to get subtly wrong, so feedback helps. Check your writing for accuracy and natural rephrasing with IELTS writing correction or TOEFL writing feedback, and see how it fits the marking criteria in the IELTS band scores guide and TOEFL score guide.