Abstract :
It is significant for students to have competence in writing research papers that requires writing
skills. Using formal language and avoiding plagiarism are mandatory for academic paper writers.
Paraphrasing is one of the writing skills, which can be interpreted as rewriting a source text using
the writers? own words by changing it syntactically or semantically while maintaining the main idea.
Other than investigating the barriers to paraphrasing and how to overcome them, this research aims
to analyze the paraphrasing strategy generally applied by the 5th-semester Diploma students of the
English Language and Culture Department of Darma Persada University. By approaching mixedresearch
methods,
this
study
uses
a
questionnaire
and
a
writing
task
as
the
instruments.
Likert
Scale
is
used
as a
data
collection
technique
in
the
quantitative
research
method,
which
is
further
processed
using
SPSS.
Meanwhile,
the
qualitative
research method approaches Keck?s Taxonomy of
Paraphrasing Types and the paraphrasing strategies by Jackie Pieterick. The analysis results find
that the majority of the students have difficulties in paraphrasing. A lack of vocabulary and using
their own words become their barriers to paraphrasing. In that case, comprehensive learning about
paraphrasing skills and strategies taught by lecturers or educators are expected to overcome the
obstacles. Furthermore, using synonyms becomes the paraphrasing strategy generally applied by the
students. The paraphrased version of the writing task also indicates that the students try not to copy
similar words or sentences from the source and therefore the most of the paraphrasing results are
included in the Minimal Revision.