{"id":8682,"date":"2024-06-22T03:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-22T03:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8682"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","slug":"in-your-own-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8682","title":{"rendered":"IN YOUR OWN WORDS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If I can&#8217;t put it into my own words, then I don&#8217;t really understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I was teaching high school English, one of the ways I could spot plagiarism in a research paper was when a student started using words outside his normal vocabulary, typically in service of explaining some concept that I knew was beyond his understanding.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The student had found a good source and had somehow recognized the importance of the information on a gut level, but didn&#8217;t really understand the point being made well enough to &#8220;put it into his own words&#8221;. The only alternative was to lift words and sentences whole.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And pretend like he knew what he was writing about.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a teacher, I came to realize that until a student could put an idea into her own words, she didn&#8217;t truly understand it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These days, as a pastor, I wonder how many professing Christians could put the gospel into their own words.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And one thing is obvious &#8211; you can&#8217;t accurately communicate an idea which you can&#8217;t articulate.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If I can&#8217;t put it into my own words, then I don&#8217;t really understand it. When I was teaching high school English, one of the ways I could spot plagiarism in a research paper was when a student started using words outside his normal vocabulary, typically in service of explaining some concept that I knew [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8683,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions\/8683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}