They are sometimes used interchangeably, but I do see a difference. If you are paraphrasing a paragraph you are generally putting exactly the same content in your own words. If you stay too close to the original you might stray into "plagiarizing." Here is a site that I have turned my students to to help them paraphrase properly.
A summary is usually a shorter presentation of a text, in which you are pointing out a number of the key points.
That is a very good site!
The way I teach the difference is thus:
PARAPHRASE = using your own words to give the same information, AND the length is
almost equal to the original text.
SUMMARY = the most important ideas from the original text, AND the length is
much shorter than the original text.
Example:
ORIGINAL TEXT: "Dogs shouldn't eat cheese because the enzymes and bacteria in cheese is highly toxic to a dog, doing especially great havoc to their small intestines--quite likely killing them."
PARAPHRASE: "Because of some extremely harmful bio-chemical reactions in a part of their digestive tract, if you want your dog to live it is advised not to feed cheese to canines."
SUMMARY: "Dogs shouldn't eat cheese because it'll probably kill them."
Happy English!
Chris
