Earticle

Although there is still a strong belief in the effectiveness of monolingual L2 teaching across the world, translation in language teaching (TILT) has been gradually gaining recognition as a valuable tool to help L2 learners. In this paper, the author pays special attention to paraphrasing, or intralingual translation, something which is innate in all language users. Thereafter, she explains an empirical study which was conducted using “paraphrasing translation (PT),” a combination of paraphrasing and translation, as a TILT approach to help develop learners’ L2 productive competence. The study consisted of four 50-minute PT workshops, prior to and followed by written translation tests and questionnaires. This was provided to 87 Japanese high school students learning English as a foreign language to investigate (1) if PT is effective, and (2) if learners feel PT is effective, in terms of the development of L2 productive competence. The results of the study indicated a very positive response to PT in L2 teaching, which leads the author to propose there be further research into the use of translation in language teaching.

문장구역은 전 세계 유수 통번역 교육기관에서 교육 도구로 활용되고 있을 뿐 아니라 실무 환경에서도 자주 활용되는 통역의 한 형태이다. 눈 앞의 텍스트 정보를 분석하여 구두로 해석한다는 점에서 문장구역은 청취 후 의미를 전달하는 일반적인 통역에 비해 시각적 방해를 많이 가하기 마련이다. 실제로 기존 실험 연구 등은 문장구역이 순차 혹은 동시통역과는 다른 인지적 처리 과정을 요한다는 점을 지적하고 있으며, 문장구역에 관한 대다수의 연구가 이구동성으로 언어간섭을 문장구역의 가장 큰 장애요인으로 꼽는다. 그럼에도 이같은 언어간섭을 극복할 수 있는 문장구역 학습자의 전략에 관한 연구는 미비한 실정이다. 이에 따라 본 실행연구는 한국어→한국어 재표현 및 3인칭 해설, 의미단위에 따른 문장 분할, 품사 전환, 핵심단서 어휘 도출, 발화 순서 표기라는 언어간섭 극복 전략 다섯 가지를 문장구역 초기 학습자들에게 제시하여 그 효과를 고찰해본다.

This paper is aimed at arguing against the proposition of Gross (1975) who suggested that "causative movement verb constructions" be paraphrased by the formula "causative verb + movement verb", and presenting counter-evidence. To begin with, we observed a general classification of causatives and applied its distributional properties to the French causative movement verb constructions. By verifying that the infinitival complements in these two constructions should be divided into two different structures: simple and complex, we proposed that infinitival complements in the latter case be treated separately from the spatio-temporal perspective. Finally, we concluded, by adopting temporal adverbials in these constructions, that our argument has been well-formed and the proposition of Gross(1975) cannot be maintained

In the context of reading-writing integration, intermediate texts L2 students produce during reading-writing practices have been recognized as a key variable influencing their writing development. This study empirically examined the role of reading-based writing cycles(i.e., reading practice-intermediate text-writing task), using ‘reading summary’ as a task bridging reading and writing. The intermediate texts produced were classified into the four categories, or ‘Copy, Near Copy, Minimal Revision, and Substantial Revision’, to analyze how students used these texts in their writing processes. The results showed that a group with high writing proficiency used intermediate texts more effectively in their writing practices than did a group with low writing proficiency. First, the high proficiency group dominated the low proficiency group in using the substantial revision category. Second, the students in the high proficiency groups engaged in two types of writing cycles; an organic writing cycle (active reading-using more intermediate texts-writing task) and a cycle skewed to reading (active reading-using less intermediate texts-writing task). Third, students producing less intermediate texts engaged in a writing cycle skewed to writing(passive reading-using less intermediate texts-writing task). This study argues that L2 practitioners should recognize the role of intermediate texts as an essential part of teaching practices; teaching how students use intermediate texts in their writing tasks.

As proverbs are created, accepted and developed by common people, they reflect the unique thoughts and sense of values derived from cultures of the communities the people belong to. Therefore, a cultural approach to translation should be applied in an effort to appropriately comprehend and translate proverbs. In order to prevent any possible meaning confusion and untranslatability during the proverb translation process, paraphrasing practice to find translational equivalences should be implemented. In addition to these activities, the semantic interpretation and reconstruction drills need to be attempted to render the translation better. This article attempts to explicate the significance of intercultural understanding of proverbs in the translation processes with theoretical explanation on equivalences and correspondence and actual translation samples.

This study aims at investigating the usefulness of paraphrasing exercises in Korean-language classes provided by graduate-level translation courses as a tool to assess students’ knowledge of subject and terminology in specialized areas, two major challenges facing them in translating the relevant texts (Hong, 2015). Based on the findings, this study seeks ways to improve the Korean-language curriculum to better help students enhance translation competence in such fields. To achieve the research goal, a Korean-language class was designed where students were asked to paraphrase texts in a variety of specialized areas such as finance/economy, law, and resources. The students were also asked to suggest English translations for some key phrases or words in the Korean source texts or their paraphrases, an activity devised to enhance the effect of paraphrasing exercises on improving translation competence. The major findings of the study are as follows: First, students’ paraphrases showed exactly which concepts and logic in a given subject area they did not accurately or sufficiently understand and which terminology they could not properly use. Second, students’ paraphrases also revealed their insufficient knowledge of subject or terminology even when their translations were acceptable, which indicates that paraphrasing exercises in Korean-language classes can serve as a useful tool to precisely identify the areas where students have insufficient knowledge that may go unnoticed in translation classes. By accurately assess students’ knowledge like this, teachers can better prepare the necessary education for each student and therefore help him or her improve translation competence in specialized fields.

This paper examines the difference in contextual effects when metaphors in the source language text are paraphrased in the target language text. Here the concept of metaphor is defined as Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have defined it, that is, not as an attribute of a word, but as a conceptual attribute. The metaphor is categorized as Kövecses (2002) does into three types: structural, ontological, and orientational metaphors. After a brief discussion of the metaphor in translation and relevance theory, this paper provides data from published translations of news stories. The contextual effect in the SL and the TL seemed to be different when SL images are paraphrased in the TL text. Given that translation is a type of communication between different languages and cultures, the notion of optimal relevance can be applied to translation. In the past, little attention has been given to metaphor translation in translation theory, and no standards have been established for the translation of metaphors. Translators made decisions based on their experience and intuition. Relevance theory and the concept of contextual effect can provide some help for translators in creating a standard for decision-making.

본 연구는 다문화 사회로 이행하고 있는 한국에서 활동 중인 커뮤니티 통번역사를 대상으로 표현바꾸기(paraphrasing) 기반 수업을 설계·운영하고, 이를 통해 학습자의 통역 자기효능감 향상 가능성을 실증적으로 분석하고자 하였다. 연구 대상은 한국에 거주하며 통번역 활동을 수행한 경험이 있는 외국인 11명이며, 이들을 대상으로 ‘인지’ 와 ‘입양’을 주제로 한 표현바꾸기 중심 수업을 실시하였다. 수업 전후에는 Lee(2014) 가 개발한 통역 자기효능감 척도를 활용하여 정의적 변화를 측정하였으며 수업 종료 후에는 만족도 조사를 통해 학습자의 반응을 수집하였다. 분석 결과, 전체 자기효능감 점수가 유의미하게 향상되었으며 특히 ‘자신감’ 하위 요인에서 뚜렷한 긍정적 변화가 나타났다. 또한 학습자의 만족도 역시 매우 높게 나타났으며 표현바꾸기 전략이 실질 적으로 통역 효능감을 높이는 교육 방안으로서 유효함을 확인할 수 있었다. 본 연구는 커뮤니티 통역사를 위한 표현 중심의 교육이 정의적 측면에 효과적일 수 있음을 제시 하였으며, 이를 토대로 표현바꾸기 기반 수업이 한국어교육과 통번역교육에서 활용될 수 있는 가능성을 탐색할 수 있었다.

This study aims to design and implement a paraphrasing-based instruction program for community interpreters, who serve as language mediators in Korea’s increasingly multicultural society, and to investigate its effect on learners’ interpreting self-efficacy. A total of 11 foreign-born community interpreters residing in Korea participated in a 10-session training program focused on the topics of “awareness” and “adoption.” The Interpreting Self-Efficacy (ISE) scale developed by Lee (2014) was administered before and after the program to measure affective changes, and a post-program satisfaction survey was conducted to gather learners’ qualitative feedback. The results showed a statistically significant improvement in overall self-efficacy scores with the most pronounced effect in the “confidence” subdomain. Participants also reported high levels of satisfaction, indicating that paraphrasing can be an effective pedagogical strategy for enhancing both cognitive and affective dimensions of interpreting performance. This study highlights the practical potential of paraphrasing-based instruction as a bridging model between Korean language education and translation/interpreting training for non-professional interpreters.

본 연구는 다문화 사회로 이행하고 있는 한국에서 활동 중인 커뮤니티 통번역사를 대상으로 표현바꾸기(paraphrasing) 기반 수업을 설계·운영하고, 이를 통해 학습자의 통역 자기효능감 향상 가능성을 실증적으로 분석하고자 하였다. 연구 대상은 한국에 거주하며 통번역 활동을 수행한 경험이 있는 외국인 11명이며, 이들을 대상으로 ‘인지’ 와 ‘입양’을 주제로 한 표현바꾸기 중심 수업을 실시하였다. 수업 전후에는 Lee(2014) 가 개발한 통역 자기효능감 척도를 활용하여 정의적 변화를 측정하였으며 수업 종료 후에는 만족도 조사를 통해 학습자의 반응을 수집하였다. 분석 결과, 전체 자기효능감 점수가 유의미하게 향상되었으며 특히 ‘자신감’ 하위 요인에서 뚜렷한 긍정적 변화가 나타났다. 또한 학습자의 만족도 역시 매우 높게 나타났으며 표현바꾸기 전략이 실질 적으로 통역 효능감을 높이는 교육 방안으로서 유효함을 확인할 수 있었다. 본 연구는 커뮤니티 통역사를 위한 표현 중심의 교육이 정의적 측면에 효과적일 수 있음을 제시 하였으며, 이를 토대로 표현바꾸기 기반 수업이 한국어교육과 통번역교육에서 활용될 수 있는 가능성을 탐색할 수 있었다.

This study aims to design and implement a paraphrasing-based instruction program for community interpreters, who serve as language mediators in Korea’s increasingly multicultural society, and to investigate its effect on learners’ interpreting self-efficacy. A total of 11 foreign-born community interpreters residing in Korea participated in a 10-session training program focused on the topics of “awareness” and “adoption.” The Interpreting Self-Efficacy (ISE) scale developed by Lee (2014) was administered before and after the program to measure affective changes, and a post-program satisfaction survey was conducted to gather learners’ qualitative feedback. The results showed a statistically significant improvement in overall self-efficacy scores with the most pronounced effect in the “confidence” subdomain. Participants also reported high levels of satisfaction, indicating that paraphrasing can be an effective pedagogical strategy for enhancing both cognitive and affective dimensions of interpreting performance. This study highlights the practical potential of paraphrasing-based instruction as a bridging model between Korean language education and translation/interpreting training for non-professional interpreters.

This study presupposes that it is important for international graduate students to know how to effectively paraphrase primary sources in order to successfully complete a thesis or dissertation. Therefore, this study reviewed cases of failure to paraphrase in theses and dissertations submitted by international graduate students on the basis of four rhetorical contexts. In addition, the types of paraphrase strategies required in each rhetorical context were indicated, and examples of actual paraphrases were presented and organized into meta-genre. The meta-genre summarized in this study is meaningful in that it explicitly presents the genre characteristics of appropriate paraphrase methods to international graduate students who are writing their theses or dissertations

본 연구는 바꿔쓰기(paraphrasing) 교육이 학문윤리 준수에 관한 자기효능 감에 어떤 효과가 있는지를 고찰하여, 궁극적으로 학문윤리의식에 긍정적 영 향을 미치는지를 알아보기 위한 목적에서 시작되었다. 최근 연구윤리 또는 학 습윤리에 대한 관심이 높아지면서 학생들의 비윤리적 학습 행위를 차단하기 위한 다각도적인 노력이 이루어지고 있다. 이와 관련하여 교육적 관심이 집중 되었던 분야는 글쓰기 윤리이며, 범대학 차원에서 글쓰기 윤리 의식을 고양시 키기 위한 서지정보 제공법 교육이 실시되었다. 하지만 최근 연구 결과에 따 르면, 기존의 서지정보 제공 교육의 효과가 낮은 것으로 드러나고 있어서 이를 보완할 수 있는 대책 마련이 시급한 형편이다. 이에 본 연구에서는 바꿔쓰기 교육이 기존의 서지정보 제공 중심 교육 의 한계를 보완할 수 있다고 보고 그 효과를 검토하고자 하였다. 바꿔쓰기는 paraphrasing을 번역한 말로 학술적 글쓰기 과정에서 저자의 어조나 아이디 어를 훼손하지 않으면서 자신의 주장에 대한 뒷받침자료로서 다른 이의 견해 를 사용하는 방법으로 이해된다. 바꿔쓰기의 효과는 단순히 원문의 단어나 문 장 구조 등을 바꾸어 진술하는 것에 머무르지 않는다. 바꿔쓰기는 궁극적으로 인지적 조화에 토대한 새로운 지식의 창출, 즉 해당 학술자료를 스스로 평가하 면서 다양한 학술자료가 제공하는 지식들을 대화적으로 탐색하는 것을 가능 하게 하는 출발점이 된다. 이에 본 연구에서는 바꿔쓰기 교육과 기존의 서지 정보 제공법 교육을 함께 받은 학생들과 기존의 서지정보 제공법 교육만 받은 학생들의 학문윤리 준수에 관한 자기효능감을 비교 분석하였고, 그 결과 바꿔쓰기 교육이 학문윤리의 식에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다는 점을 확인하였다.

This paper aims at proposing the paraphrasing as the academic writing teaching method for promoting the learning ethics and reviewing the effectiveness. After years of the interest in the learning ethics, the right citation styles may be taught , or various efforts have been trying to recall the seriousness of plagiarism as opening to the public various unethical writing cases inside our outside school or introduce a retrieval system of plagiarism for measuring if a report is plagiarized or how much it is plagiarized. However, it is not easy to be said that the existing plagiarism preventive education has been getting a good outcome for promoting the learning ethics, which is devoting to teach how to quate academic materials focusing on academic honesty and moral consciousness. For it, this article proposed the paraphrasing education as an education for an advisable academic material use and examined the effectiveness. The paraphrasing can be interpreted usually as‘ rewriting’, ’swift the description’, and may be understood as a way to use other’s opinion for supporting one’s insistence not damaging the author’s tone and idea during academic writing. However, the effectiveness of paraphrasing is not just to change the words or the structure of a sentence in the original, but it is to derive‘ the process-oriented academic writing’, not the resultoriented, and it may be a start point to create a new knowledge based on cognitive harmony, which evaluates its materials by itself and is possible to examine conversationally the knowledge of various academic materials. For this, this study found that the paraphrasing education can help students to promote the learning ethics as the result of academic writing of the students who had the paraphrasing education and the result of selfefficacy analysis on academic material use and understanding.

이 논문의 목적은 과학기술의 대중적 소통을 위한 바꿔쓰기의 방법을 제시하는 데 있다. 그간 대학에서의 과학 글쓰기 교육은 주로 실험보고서나 논문 작성에 집중되어 왔다. 하지만 과학기술과 대중 간의 소통이 중요해짐에 따라 과학 전공자들에게도 대중적 글쓰기 능력이 요구된다. 과학기술의 내용을 대중에게 전달하려면 무엇보다 소통 능력이 중요하고 이는 과학에세이 교육을 통해 이루어진다. 과학에세이 교육에서는 과학기술에 대한 성찰 못지않게 과학적 내용을 대중의 언어로 바꿔쓰는 것이 중요하다. 바꿔쓰기는 통상 간접인용을 말하지만, 이 경우 인용의 기술을 넘어선 일종의 ‘지식’ 번역이라 할 수 있다. 과학기술과 대중의 소통을 위한 바꿔쓰기 교육은 다음의 세 단계로 이루어진다. 먼저, ‘준비 과정’으로 과학 텍스트를 충분히 잘 이해해야 한다. 둘째, ‘바꿔쓰기 과정’으로 과학 텍스트를 대중적 에세이에 적합하게 쉽고 분명하게 바꿔써야 한다. 셋째, ‘검토 과정’으로 바꿔 쓴 내용을 오류가 없는지 일정한 기준에 따라 점검해야 한다. 이러한 바꿔쓰기 교육은 학문간 융복합이나 대중의 과학 이해가 중요한 오늘날 더욱 강조될 필요가 있다.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the method of paraphrasing for the public communication of science and technology. Up to now, scientific writing education at the university level has focused on how to write an experiment report or a research paper. However, as scientific communication in which scientific and technological knowledge and the public are connected to each other becomes important, some public writing abilities for science majors are seriously needed. Above all, in conveying a text in science and technology to the public, the ability to convert scientific knowledge is primarily important. In this regard, paraphrasing plays a significant role in communicating scientific and technological knowledge to the public. Here paraphrasing is not simply the indirect quotation of a text but rather a new 'translation' of the text. Paraphrasing instruction for scientific communication is conducted in three stages. First, in the ‘preparation process’, students should read a text until he or she reaches some sufficient understanding of the text. Second, in the ‘paraphrasing process’, students must paraphrase an original scientific and technological text into an easy and clear popular essay. Third, in the ‘review process’, students, mainly for the purpose of checking potential errors and misunderstandings, should re-examine the contents of an original text in accordance with certain standards. I suggest that paraphrasing instruction through scientific essays should be done, not merely from the perspective of quotation exercise but rather from the viewpoint of the public communication of science and technology in general. It can contribute to fostering students' scientific and technological communication capacities, particularly in the present era that emphasizes the need for proper communication between science & technology and the public.

This study examines the effects of Korean college students' English proficiency and the English text types on their paraphrases. Korean college students with three groups of English proficiency (high, mid, and low) read two types of English texts, causal texts, and argumentative texts, and paraphrased them in English. Students' paraphrase text was evaluated in terms of content (idea exposition, idea development, and wrap up), organization (coherence and cohesion) and language use (grammatical accuracy), and analyzed by MANOVA. As a result, it was found that there was a significant difference in their paraphrase performance according to the participants’ English proficiency levels rather than the types of English texts. The results of this study have educational implications for English paraphrase education to prevent plagiarism for Korean university students.

본 연구는 바꿔쓰기(paraphrasing) 교육이 학문윤리 준수에 관한 자기효능감에 어떤 효과가 있는지를 고찰하여, 궁극적으로 학문윤리의식에 긍정적 영향을 미치는지를 알아보기 위한 목적에서 시작되었다. 최근 연구윤리 또는 학습윤리에 대한 관심이 높아지면서 학생들의 비윤리적 학습 행위를 차단하기 위한 다각도적인 노력이 이루어지고 있다. 이와 관련하여 교육적 관심이 집중되었던 분야는 글쓰기 윤리이며, 범대학 차원에서 글쓰기 윤리 의식을 고양시키기 위한 서지정보 제공법 교육이 실시되었다. 하지만 최근 연구 결과에 따르면, 기존의 서지정보 제공 교육의 효과가 낮은 것으로 드러나고 있어서 이를 보완할 수 있는 대책 마련이 시급한 형편이다. 이에 본 연구에서는 바꿔쓰기 교육이 기존의 서지정보 제공 중심 교육의 한계를 보완할 수 있다고 보고 그 효과를 검토하고자 하였다. 바꿔쓰기는 paraphrasing을 번역한 말로 학술적 글쓰기 과정에서 저자의 어조나 아이디어를 훼손하지 않으면서 자신의 주장에 대한 뒷받침자료로서 다른 이의 견해를 사용하는 방법으로 이해된다. 바꿔쓰기의 효과는 단순히 원문의 단어나 문장 구조 등을 바꾸어 진술하는 것에 머무르지 않는다. 바꿔쓰기는 궁극적으로 인지적 조화에 토대한 새로운 지식의 창출, 즉 해당 학술자료를 스스로 평가하면서 다양한 학술자료가 제공하는 지식들을 대화적으로 탐색하는 것을 가능하게 하는 출발점이 된다. 이에 본 연구에서는 바꿔쓰기 교육과 기존의 서지정보 제공법 교육을 함께 받은 학생들과 기존의 서지정보 제공법 교육만 받은 학생들의 학문윤리 준수에 관한 자기효능감을 비교 분석하였고, 그 결과 바꿔쓰기 교육이 학문윤리의식에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다는 점을 확인하였다.

This paper aims at proposing the paraphrasing as the academic writing teaching method for promoting the learning ethics and reviewing the effectiveness. After years of the interest in the learning ethics, the right citation styles may be taught , or various efforts have been trying to recall the seriousness of plagiarism as opening to the public various unethical writing cases inside our outside school or introduce a retrieval system of plagiarism for measuring if a report is plagiarized or how much it is plagiarized. However, it is not easy to be said that the existing plagiarism preventive education has been getting a good outcome for promoting the learning ethics, which is devoting to teach how to quate academic materials focusing on academic honesty and moral consciousness. For it, this article proposed the paraphrasing education as an education for an advisable academic material use and examined the effectiveness. The paraphrasing can be interpreted usually as ‘rewriting’, ’swift the description’, and may be understood as a way to use other’s opinion for supporting one’s insistence not damaging the author’s tone and idea during academic writing. However, the effectiveness of paraphrasing is not just to change the words or the structure of a sentence in the original, but it is to derive ‘the process-oriented academic writing’, not the result-oriented, and it may be a start point to create a new knowledge based on cognitive harmony, which evaluates its materials by itself and is possible to examine conversationally the knowledge of various academic materials. For this, this study found that the paraphrasing education can help students to promote the learning ethics as the result of academic writing of the students who had the paraphrasing education and the result of self-efficacy analysis on academic material use and understanding.

This study explores how Korean EFL college students approach summary writing, focusing on their content selection and use of paraphrasing strategies. To systematically analyze these aspects, it adopts Kim’s (2001) Importance Rate framework to analyze content selection and Keck’s (2006) Paraphrase Types taxonomy to categorize paraphrasing strategies. Thirty summaries by first-year students across various disciplines were analyzed to compare two proficiency groups. The study closely examines how the rhetorical importance of content ideas relates to the types of paraphrasing employed, and how these patterns vary between the two groups. Although both groups tended to prioritize ideas of higher importance, their approaches to paraphrasing differed. Proficient writers (Group A) used a wider variety of paraphrasing strategies, particularly moderate and substantial revisions, and showed more flexibility in transforming ideas across different importance levels. On the other hand, less proficient writers (Group B) relied more on surface-level paraphrasing and struggled to adapt content beyond the main ideas in a gradual, strategic way. That is, the quality of summary writing is influenced not just by overall proficiency, but also by students’ ability to connect content selection with appropriate paraphrasing depth. The study thus recommends that writing instruction should be differentiated by proficiency level and offer targeted support for both content selection and paraphrasing depth.

The present study examined the extent to which a key linguistic resource of grammatical metaphor (GM) drawn from SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) could influence Korean EFL university students’ paraphrasing. After five weeks of nominalization-based paraphrasing practice (i.e., ‘the process of making nouns’) in a reading class, all the attempted paraphrases from the pre- and post-writing were analyzed. The findings revealed that although the amount of ‘near copy’ was reduced, the participants’ paraphrases remained minimal revisions. In addition, their performance showed failures of proper vocabulary replacement with minor grammatical modifications. The analyses of grammatical metaphors revealed that ‘process as noun’ in experiential metaphors as well as logical metaphors facilitated their paraphrasing process. Finally, the survey analyses showed that nominalization helped to condense important content into a simple noun; however, they expressed mixed perceptions about the issue of deleting some parts. This study may shed light on both L2 paraphrasing and GM research.

This paper aims to investigate what types of paraphrasing are the most and the least frequently attempted by Korean L2 writers and to examine whether the tendency is affected by L2 writers’ English proficiency. A total of 50 summary protocols were collected from 50 college students and analyzed through the discourse analysis program, CLAN. It has been found that when attempting to paraphrase, Korean L2summary writers tend to resort to minimal modification such as deleting, adding, or replacing vocabulary using synonyms; they are reluctant to modify substantially by combining or transforming sentence structures. The frequency of using more substantial syntactic modification increases as their proficiency improves. However,the overall tendency still remains that syntactic modification is much less used than lexical modification across the differing proficiency groups. Thus, instruction of paraphrasing skills is recommended particularly for less proficient L2 writers since it encourages them to use syntactic and lexical knowledge for communicative purposes. It is also suggested that paraphrasing tasks will be valid writing tasks for assessing syntactic and lexical knowledge in use.

Paraphrasing quality has proven to be highly associated with two major linguistic components: lexical competence and syntactic competence. Nonetheless, few attempts have been made to view the skill as a window through which learners’ interlanguage can be estimated. How learners manipulate sentence structures and vocabulary in retelling may represent their current level of language proficiency. Therefore, with an aim to verify whether paraphrasing tasks are legitimate as a writing test item to accurately identify the learners’ productive language abili- ties, a correlation study was conducted with 364 test-takers ranging from grade 7 to university freshmen. The scores the learners earned from paraphrasing tasks were compared with those obtained from self-assessments of their English abilities in the case of the secondary school students and from TOEIC in the case of the university students. Paraphrase rating scales adopted in this study were developed by school teachers, considering the range of Korean secondary students’ English proficiency. It has been revealed that paraphrasing task has the potential as a valid writing test item as proven by statistically significant correlation coefficients between two sets of scores.