Making Academic Writing More Engaging

When James M. Lang published the book On Course in 2008 and garnered notable success, his editor invited him to dinner. She suggested that Lang might be interested in writing a book about cheating. Initially reluctant, Lang’s interest was piqued after an incident with one of his students. He agreed to write a book on cheating, which was subsequently published.

Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty is, I believe, Lang’s magnum opus. In it, he established his signature interdisciplinary structure, drawing from various disciplines, including science, literature, and psychology. The book was a great success, allowing Lang to share his ideas at universities as far away as Jordan and with organizations like the United Nations. As Lang wrote in an email to me: “Cheating Lessons literally opened up the world to me. Because academic dishonesty occurs in every higher education system, colleges and universities are always looking for new ways to understand and address it.”

As a student, I agree with Lang. Whenever I entertain the idea of cheating, it is because I do not understand the material. If I master the material, the notion of cheating never even crosses my mind. Lang has correctly diagnosed the cheating predicament and offers an excellent solution: designing lessons that are student-centric. When students master the material and take charge of their learning, they are less likely to think about cheating.

Lang is a professor at the University of Notre Dame and a regular columnist at The Chronicle of Higher Education. But he is, first and foremost, a compulsive writer. “Compulsive” is his word to describe his writing regimen. In his email, he stated: “The way I think through problems is by writing about them. I write all the time, both because I find it fulfilling and because I use writing to make sense of my experiences, both within and outside of higher education.”

Many writers can resonate with the idea that engaging with the world through writing makes the world real. As I often say, if I do not see it in writing, it does not exist for me.

Lang is a rare breed among writers, having published books with Harvard University Press and articles in popular journals such as The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has the mind of a formidable scholar and the temperament of an indefatigable journalist. His writing is heavily based on personal experiences, making it engaging and compelling. Readers become interested not only in his ideas but also in their progenitor.

I came across Lang’s writings through my writing mentor, John Trimble, a professor emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin. Lang published a rave review of Trimble’s opus, Writing with Style, titled “A Classic ‘Nontextbook’ on Writing.” Trimble shared the review of Lang with me and said, “Lang has quite an Internet presence—and life.”

After battling a severe case of myocarditis in late 2021, Lang faced significant health challenges, including pneumonia and a stroke during heart transplant surgery. Despite these obstacles, he made a near-miraculous recovery with the support of Tufts Medical Center, therapists, and his family. This experience renewed his commitment to writing, education, and philanthropy, allowing him to return to his professional endeavors.

I was delighted to learn that Lang is writing a book on the art and craft of writing, slated for publication in April 2025. While Trimble argues that writers should aim not to impress but to serve readers, Lang takes this a step further, suggesting that writers should teach readers. There is a critical need for academics to learn how to write plain, clear, and readable prose. Writing like teachers is an effective approach because most academic writers are, first and foremost, teachers.

The title of Lang's forthcoming book is Writing Like a Teacher: Expanding Audiences for Nonfiction Writing. Lang identifies the need: “Many faculty members want to expand the audiences for their research and ideas and become more public scholars. But they seem to have trouble transitioning from traditional academic writing to writing that appeals to readers outside their discipline.”

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The solution, he believes, is to: “Translate the teaching principles that guide you in the classroom—where you are also educating non-experts—into your writing practices. Simply put: write like a teacher.”

Why would Lang take on this book? As he says in his email, “I have been writing about teaching for a long time, but my original interest was in writing, and I taught writing for almost three decades. This book marries my two longstanding interests: teaching and writing.” I agree with the need, the solution, and the choice of author.

As an international scholar and multilingual learner who has studied at the University of Miami, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Minnesota, I have encountered many scholars who write obtuse, turgid, and incomprehensible academic prose. Some academic writers want to become public scholars but struggle to write clear, plain, and readable prose. I argue that they need to learn from both Trimble and Lang.

Trimble believes the problem is that most academic writers did not receive interlinear emendations to model clear, readable prose. He argued that we write what we read, just as we are what we eat.

Lang also identified a crucial issue: traditional academics struggle to transition because they lack the skill of good writing. But Lang is a facile writer who practices what he preaches. I've learned much about good writing from reading his books and paying attention to how he puts ideas into words. Writing Like a Teacher taps into what academics already know, and then teaching them a new skill is an effective way to address this problem. My Ph.D. advisor told me he thinks of himself as a teacher first and a writer second, so he would be delighted to read a book that capitalizes on that notion.

I believe academic authors have a duty to be inclusive in their scholarship. As an international scholar and multilingual learner, I find it challenging to understand scholarship written in jargon. I prefer prose like Lang’s and Trimble’s, which is clear and accessible.

There is a misconception that readable prose is “dumbed down,” but that is incorrect. Another misconception is that jargon-filled prose is “deep thought,” which is also incorrect. There is no correlation between the difficulty of the writing and the depth of the thought.

I never have to re-read any of Lang's sentences, which means he takes great care to make his prose clear, plain, and readable. Writers owe it to their readers to be clear. As Trimble argues in Writing With Style, readers are impatient to get the goods and begrudge any author who makes them work hard to get them.

I believe that Writing Like a Teacher will be a welcome addition to the genre of good writing for academics. In the field of law, there is a robust movement for "plain English," where legal jargon is frowned upon. I argue that we need a similar movement in academia, where obtuse jargon is frowned upon.

As E. B. White said, “Since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. And although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one. Even to a writer who is being intentionally obscure or wild of tongue, we can say, ‘Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!’”

The world of academia would be a better place if all scholars committed to clear prose. Following E. B. White’s maxim, we ask them to deploy jargon clearly. We are not asking them to stop using technical terms. Rather, we are asking them to write technical yet readable prose.

The problem with unclear writing is often not diction but syntax. As William Beeman, a linguist at the University of Minnesota, argued, some languages are heavily syntax-based, while others have freer syntax because words are inflected for their function. Latin, for example, has almost free syntax due to extensive inflection. English, like Chinese, is heavily syntax-dependent and has far less inflection. Therefore, the issue with unclear writing lies in syntax and structure.

As George Gopen, professor emeritus at Duke University, stated in The Sense of Structure: "In writing, as in real estate, the most important factor is location, location, location." I agree with him because I was able to write clear prose by mastering the syntactical structure of English sentences. It is the key to writing clear English prose. As a non-native English writer, in my eighth year of writing in English, if I can learn to write clear prose, then my native English counterparts absolutely can. The key is in the structure.