An investigation of cognitive process of paraphrasing in academic writing: a case study of ESL undergraduates in Pakistan

Paraphrasing is a sub-skill of academic writing involving a complex cognitive process that demonstrates comprehension and the ability to reconstruct information in an individual way. In English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses, this skill is often overlooked, although it plays a critical role in developing academic literacy among students. For ESL Pakistani undergraduates, paraphrasing is cognitively demanding as it requires integrating appropriate vocabulary, constructing new sentence structures, ensuring textual authenticity, and managing challenges such as limited lexical resources, cognitive load, and syntactic complexity. The aim of this study was to investigate the cognitive processes and challenges experienced by ESL undergraduates in paraphrasing academic texts, as well as the factors influencing their use of paraphrasing skills in academic writing. The study addressed three research questions: (1) How do Pakistani undergraduates apply cognitive processes in a writing task? (2) What paraphrasing skills are used by Pakistani undergraduates in academic writing? and (3) What factors influence their use of paraphrasing skills? Using a qualitative case study design, data were collected through Think-Aloud Protocols (TAP), document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations involving eight ESL undergraduates from a semi-public business university in Pakistan. The findings revealed that both novice and fluent writers employed cognitive processes such as planning, skimming, translating, reorganizing, and reviewing during paraphrasing. However, they faced challenges related to limited vocabulary, semantic interpretation, and syntactic restructuring. Cognitive stresses such as thought load, anxiety, and working memory constraints also influenced their ability to retain and transform information effectively. The study culminated in the development of a framework of Cognitive Process of Paraphrasing that extends the theoretical models of Flower and Hayes (1981) and Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) by contextualizing them within the ESL academic writing environment. This framework illustrates the dynamic interaction of planning, translating, and reviewing processes in ESL paraphrasing. The findings hold pedagogical implications not only for students but also for teachers, curriculum designers, and policymakers, by emphasizing the need to integrate explicit cognitive strategy training and scaffolded instruction in EAP curricula.