For pre-tertiary students, they have to take a subject called General Paper. This rigorous paper requires them to write an argumentative essay as well as undertake a comprehension paper. The comprehension paper necessitates them to understand and respond to the arguments of 1-2 authors on a particular topic of interest.

One thing that differentiates General Paper from the English subjects their younger counterparts take in primary and secondary school is that students are expected to express ideas in their own words. While lifting words from the passage is allowed for primary and secondary school students, junior college students have to paraphrase the author's ideas. As such, they have to become adept at various re-expression strategies.

For instance, they can use synonyms and antonyms to express the author's ideas. However, they have to be mindful of the need not to apply word-for-word substiution, lest their paraphrased responses turn out to be awkward and not convey the essence of the author's ideas. Instead, their use of synonyms and antonyms has to capture the central ideas.

In other instances, shifting the subject to another part of the sentence will help students relate the author's ideas in a relatively fuss-free way. Students might do well to remember that if they want to make their paraphrases impactful, they could position the emphatic words at the end of the sentence because it is the most prominent position.

Similarly, we could use a general term that captures the examples or details used. For instance, if the author mentions River Wonders, Marina Bay Sands, and Raffles Hotel in his passage, we could encapsulate within the general term - places of interest. On the other hand, we could provide examples to replace a general term or concept. Social media platforms could be re-expressed as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and the like.