Korin Griffin

September 19th, 2019

ENG110 Section F

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Ted Talk

There is a technical difference between summarizing a story and paraphrasing a quote. Summarizing, in short, is an overview of a story. Summarizing a story captures the basic and key points and/or ideas of a reading, story, article, material, text, etc. It is a balanced, unbiased, shortview that explains material. This way the reader can understand the gist of whichever material you are writing, talking, or arguing about. Paraphrasing is putting a quote from a reading or text into your own words and ideas. This puts your own twist on the quote to explain it in a different way than it is explained in the text. It shows your own interpretation of the quote. Paraphrasing helps clarify, “dumb it down”, the meaning behind quotes. Paraphrasing should be used when you have already used a lot of quotes and when you want to infuse your own voice. Summarizing should be used to make the reader understand what the story or article, that you are talking about, is saying. Summarizing gives background information to the reader. 

Original quote #1:

“Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.” 

Paraphrase #1:

Telling a story of another person isn’t powerful, what is powerful is making the story define the person. 

Original quote #2:

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Paraphrase #2:

The problem with stereotypes that are created in a single story is that they are not completed, not completely untrue. This makes it seem like the one story is the only story to tell.