Paraphrasing means taking the words of anothersource and restating them, using your own vocabulary withoutinterfering with the idea of the original text. Paraphrasing is usedfor many reasons such as avoiding using too much quotations in aparagraph, clarifying, and/or simplifying a complicated author’swords in a quotation, and practicing close academic reading andwriting. The present study deals with the concept of paraphrasing,in general, and evaluating specific groups of 4th-year KurdishUniversity English as a Foreign Language learners in particular,to investigate the main difficulties that the students face regardingthis area. To conduct the study, the following hypotheses areproposed: (1) Advanced Kurdish University students of the EnglishDepartment face difficulties in the area of paraphrasing. (2) Similarresults will be obtained for participants in the English Department/College of Basic Education/University of Sulaimani, EnglishDepartment/College of Education/University of Charmo, EnglishDepartments/Colleges of Language/Sulaimani University, andEnglish Departments/Colleges of Language/Cihan University. Toverify the hypotheses, a pilot test and then a final test are adoptedin conducting the study. Reliability and validity of the tests areverified, the subjects are (50) randomly selected students of fourEnglish Departments of three universities in Kurdistan. The resultsobtained from the tests have been analyzed statistically, as well asdiagnosing the students’ errors. The study ended up with someconclusions.

http://dx.doi.org/10.14500/icelc2019.efl201