No matter what type of person you are – whether a student or a professional – a good vocabulary is something you need to necessarily have.
If you are a student, let’s say, then you need to have a good vocabulary in order to perform well in your work and get the grades you need.
On the other hand, if you are a professional – and more specifically in the field of IT – then you need to have a good vocabulary for effective communication, be it verbal or in writing.
There are a lot of different ways in which you can improve your vocabulary. One such way is to use online paraphrasing tools.
You could be a little unaware of what these tools are, how they work, and how you can use them to learn new words. Don’t worry. In this post, we will be looking at all of this in detail.
- Starting Off…What is Online Paraphrasing?
Online paraphrasing simply refers to the process of using a paraphrasing tool to reword and rephrase a piece of content to change its wording but retain the original meaning.
Paraphrasing is typically referred to as a manual method of rephrasing a sentence or piece of content for better clarity. In other words, the sentence:
“The danger dogging the person not only meant that his life was in jeopardy, but it also meant that he would be put through post-humous disgrace.”
…could be paraphrased for better clarity thus:
“The danger would not only kill him but also disgrace him afterward.”
So, in manual paraphrasing, there are different types of changes that are usually made to the text. For example, the words can be changed with synonyms, the sentence structures can be shuffled around and they (the sentences) can also be broken up or merged where necessary.
Now, in online paraphrasing, all of these steps are taken by the tool itself. As a result, the whole paraphrasing process takes a few seconds to complete.
- How Can Online Paraphrasing Help You Improve Your Vocab?
We’re done looking at what online paraphrasing is, but now let’s understand how it can help you build your vocab.
In the part above, we discussed three main types of changes that are usually made to a piece of text in order to paraphrase it. They are, to reiterate:
- Synonymizing (changing words with their synonyms)
- Shuffling sentence structures
- Breaking or merging sentences
Of these three, the first one i.e., synonymizing is the step that is most commonly taken during paraphrasing. For example, if the text at hand needs to be very lightly paraphrased or if the clarity needs to be just marginally improved.
And it is synonymizing itself that can be used for improving vocabulary. Let’s explain that a little.
When you paraphrase something manually, you rely on your own memory and your own existing vocabulary to synonymize the text. On the other hand, when you paraphrase online using a tool, the latter uses its algorithms to literally go through millions of words and find the right synonym according to the context.
This gimmick i.e., the automated synonymizing performed by the tool can help you improve your vocabulary since you can get exposed to a lot of new words. Compared to a person, the “vocabulary” of a tool is limitless, and you can use this to your benefit in order to learn as many words as you can.
- How Should You Use a Paraphrasing Tool to Maximize Vocabulary Building?
We did just discuss the basic functionality of paraphrasing tools and how they can be used to improve vocabulary. However, to get the most out of this process, there are a number of different things that you can try. For the next part of this post, we will be looking at some of those.
- Enter Verb-Rich Content
If you want to learn new words using a paraphrasing tool, you have to give it a proper chance to make the changes it needs.
For example, if you enter some content that has a lot of proper nouns in it coupled with a lot of auxiliary verbs, then there won’t be much for the tool to change. Here is an example:
“From Sudan to Greece, Harry and John took the American Airlines airplane from the JFK Airport in NY.”
Other than the word “airplane,” there is literally nothing that the tool can change that can contribute to vocabulary building.
On the other hand, if we use something like this:
“Ending in a stalemate, the move made by the marauders led them to a quandary about whom to save and whom to abandon. Their indecisiveness was exacerbated by the fact that they had appointed as their chief a child who was more interested in riding his horse than leading his men.”
In this paragraph, there are many words that the paraphrasing tool would be able to replace their synonyms. In a nutshell, you have to take care of using the right content if you want to learn new words properly.
- Be Particular About Using the Right Tool
What we’ve been discussing above vis-à-vis the function of paraphrasing tools and how they work to help you learn new words is more or less restricted to high-quality ones. In other words, there are a lot of paraphrasing tools available. If you want to get their benefits in the way we’ve been describing, then you have to make sure that you pick a good tool from the start.
So, how do you exactly do that? There are a couple of different things you can do, such as:
- Look for online posts and guides that describe a top list of paraphrasers that you can use
- Search for paraphrasers online and try out the ones listed at the top by the search engine
- Visit reviewing sites like G2 and Capterra to find top-rated paraphrasing tools
- Note Down and Memorize
Using a paraphrasing tool alone isn’t enough. You should also take care to note down the new words that you learn. That way, they will get more embedded in your memory and you won’t forget them very quick.
Conclusion
As we said earlier, there are a lot of different ways in which you can learn new words and expand your vocabulary. However, using a thesaurus or taking a quiz, etc., can get somewhat boring after a while.
Using a paraphrasing tool, on the other hand, isn’t something you can easily get tired of. Since you have to use your own content, you can have a lot of fun with the tool by seeing the changes it makes. In our personal experience, we’ve found that putting funny and nonsensical content into the paraphrasing tool makes the whole learning process a lot more enjoyable. Mind you, when we say “nonsensical”, we don’t mean it literally. Your content should make sense, but it can be something funny, like this:
“It was only after pouring five jugs of gas in his car tank that Jim realized that the tankard was full of water. No wonder his car wouldn’t start.”
Get the idea? Have fun learning new words, then!