摘要：Reading comprehension in Ecuadorian students has been mostly managed at a literal comprehension level,
leaving out inferential and critical comprehension. This is because most of the articles students read require a
high level of literacy and a good domain of comprehension strategies. One of these strategies is paraphrasing;
therefore, the purpose of this research was to analyze the effects of paraphrasing and its implications on reading
comprehension skills in English as a foreign language. This study was developed in B1 students enrolled at the
6th level of English at Linguistics Competence Department at Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo UNACH
with a sample of 50 students. A base-line pre-test and a posttest to an experimental and control group were
applied. The project implementation took ten sessions and students learned the techniques to effectively
paraphrase and the pitfalls they should avoid when applying this strategy. The analysis of T-student test yielded
that the experimental group outperformed the control group. The main results showed that once students learn
the techniques and correctly apply them, it helped them out to go beyond the literacy level, applying an authentic
reading comprehension of the text. Pedagogical implications about paraphrasing and reading comprehension are
presented in the discussion.
