Practising paraphrasing is so important for our students: it requires them to know vocabulary and to manipulate structures successfully. Doing it in pairs or groups means they have to be explicit about the process, further advancing their confidence and control. If you can name it, you can tame it! It is of course a skill very much required in academic writing and practising can help emphasise this, alongside the importance of not copying chunks from the task or a text. Little and often seems to work well, in my experience.
3 in 3: This one’s a good warmer. Show 3 short sentences on the board at the start of the class. Set a timer for 3 minutes. Students work in pairs to paraphrase each sentence. Mini whiteboards could be used for this. After 3 minutes, ask various students to share their sentences. Weaker students could be given tips, eg. Turn the verb into a noun or Change it into the passive voice. Comment on (or elicit comments from students on) what techniques worked well and what didn’t and why. My IELTS students are getting better and better at this.
Ladder key word transformations: Use FCE style key word transformations. You could use this for focusing on manipulating a particular language feature. Print them out so that the paraphrased version is on the reverse of the original. Use paper that is thick enough that you can’t read the other side through it. They should be numbered 1-10. Give each pair a stack of strips 1-10. Student A holds up card 1 and tries to give the paraphrased version (the transformed sentence). Student B can see the answer on the back. If Student A gets it right, the card is put on a new pile and play continues with Student A and card 2. When Student A gets one wrong, the cards must be put back on the pile (1-10) and this time Student B has a go. The winner is the first one to get all the way through to 10 in one go.
Paraphrasing race: Prepare some cut up sentences for students to paraphrase, e.g. 6. Put students in teams. Each team takes sentence number 1 and paraphrases it. They return it to you for checking. They continue with sentence 2 if it’s good, or keep trying if not yet. The first team to get to the end wins.
Quiz Quiz Trade: Each student has a card with a sentence on it. (You could also supply possible paraphrases.) Set a timer for 5 minutes. They mingle and read their sentence to a partner. The partner must try to paraphrase it. When the first student is happy with the paraphrase, they swap roles. Then they swap cards before finding a new partner. When you call time, they sit down and write down one original sentence and its paraphrase that they can remember (but not the one in their hands at the end).
Identify Me: Prepare some sentences for paraphrasing. Students need a piece of paper each. One student reads out the first sentence. Everyone else writes their paraphrase of it. The first student collects in the attempts, shuffles them up and reads them out. Students have to guess who wrote each one. If they guess correctly, they get a point. You can also award points for good paraphrasing attempts.
The Paraphrasing Game: This is an online board game, counters and dice included (see picture below). When you land on a square with a star, you have to answer an FCE style key-word sentence transformation question.
Baamboozle: Online game for teams, to use in class. There are a number of paraphrasing games, for example this one and this one.
Using ChatGPT: Ask ChatGPT to paraphrase the text and then comment on it together. (I did this in my post about improving summary writing)
Do you have any favourite paraphrasing activities? Please share in the comments below!
A Hive of Activities 
Reblogged this on Crowd Shorts and commented:
Love it! I’m going to use them all with my C2 students.
Yay! Hope they enjoy it!