Take research notes in one's own words and organize them into an outline that matches the research question.
Paraphrasing means writing down the IDEA from a source in your own words and your own sentence structure, not copying phrases and swapping a few words. Copying a source's exact words, or barely-changed words, and presenting them as your own is plagiarism -- a serious problem even by accident. The fix is simple: read a passage, look away from it, then write what it said from memory, checking back only to verify facts.
Once notes exist, organize them into an outline: group notes into three or four main headings that each answer one piece of the research question -- for a Silk Road question, headings might be trade goods, cultural and religious exchange, and effects on cities -- then order the headings in the sequence that will make the most sense to a reader.
Mastery looks like: They take notes that are genuinely reworded in their own words and organize those notes into a logical outline with headings that answer the research question.
Common stumbles: Copying source language too closely while believing it counts as paraphrasing; building an outline with headings that do not actually connect back to the research question.
See it visually
Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.