Plain Language
Plain Language as Pedagogy
Summary | This article explains why plain language is important for teaching in colleges and universities. Learning is harder if academic writing is confusing or stressful. Plain language helps students understand information the first time they read it. We used plain language in our class, giving students summaries of readings, lectures, and videos. Students said these were helpful. Using plain language in the classroom can be challenging because it requires time and knowledge to do it well. We need better resources and more research to support instructors in using plain language.
By Lieke van Heumen, Helen Rottier, and Corbin Outlaw
Students at colleges and universities come from diverse backgrounds. They arrive with different language experiences, educational histories, and levels of familiarity with academic reading. To support success for all students, colleges and universities encourage inclusive teaching practices. Inclusive teaching practices include accessible course design, instruction, and assessment to meet the needs of many students and to reduce barriers to learning. One new strategy for making course content more accessible is the use of plain language.
Supporting Students Through Plain Language
Many students struggle to comprehend dense academic writing. Long sentences, unfamiliar concepts, and jargon make readings feel intimidating, especially for first-generation students, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities. When students spend their mental energy trying to understand language, they are less able to engage with the ideas in the writing. Scholars, including Iva W. Cheung in 2017 (doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2017.2759639) and Richard E. Mayer and Roxana Mareno in 2010 (doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511844744.009), have shown that heavy cognitive load makes it harder to remember information and can reduce students’ motivation to continue reading. Making information easier to access supports epistemic justice, the idea that everyone deserves fair opportunities to understand, use, and contribute to knowledge. Plain language responds by removing avoidable obstacles in learning. It does not reduce the complexity of ideas but helps more learners access and engage with them.
Plain Language as Pedagogy and UDL Practice
Implementing plain language aligns with Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework that encourages instructors to design courses with diverse student needs in mind from the beginning. UDL emphasizes planning ahead for students’ needs, instead of addressing challenges as they come up. Plain language follows the same idea: it makes information clearer and more accessible for all students.
Lieke van Heumen (at podium, left) and her team created plain-language summaries of course materials for an introductory disability studies class at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Teachers use plain language to make assignment instructions clearer, lecture or presentation materials easier to understand, and feedback more useful. Another effective tool is the plain language summary (PLS). A PLS includes the key ideas from a reading or lecture in short sentences, everyday vocabulary, and a logical flow that guides the reader. They do not replace the original content but provide students with an additional entry point into the material.
Putting Plain Language Into Practice
We implemented PLSs of the readings, recorded lectures, and videos in our introductory disability studies course (DHD101), which attracts approximately 150 students each semester from many different academic backgrounds. In this course, students gain insight into disability as a historical, social, cultural, and political phenomenon in the United States. We developed the PLSs to support students with intellectual and other developmental disabilities (IDD) in the course as part of their certificate program. In keeping with UDL principles, the PLSs were offered to all students, and we quickly discovered that students with and without disabilities were using and benefiting from this new tool.
We developed a 10-step process for creating the PLSs, including reviewing existing plain-language guides, identifying main ideas, rewriting them in short, clear sentences, defining new terms, and revising the summaries with reader input. We worked with two self-advocates who reviewed drafts of the summaries and used them to complete classroom activities, including an assignment and a quiz. Their feedback shaped the final PLSs. For example, they suggested adding real-life examples, clarifying definitions, and adjusting the pacing of information. This participatory approach reflects an important trend in plain language work: the involvement of people who will ultimately use the materials.
Students responded enthusiastically to the PLSs. Many shared that reading the PLS before tackling the full text helped them know what to expect. Others preferred reading the summary afterward to check their understanding. Several students said the summaries made the readings feel less overwhelming and helped them feel more prepared for course assessments.
Challenges to Plain Language as Pedagogy
As promising as this work is, it also comes with challenges. Creating well-written PLSs takes time, especially at first. Instructors may worry that using plain language could be seen as lowering academic standards. In reality, plain language presents complex ideas more clearly, allowing all students to engage with the same rigorous content. Clear communication is a hallmark of effective scholarship.
Expanding strategies like PLSs beyond a single course or instructor to reach multiple courses and students, and making them sustainable across programs or departments, is also challenging. Faculty need support, training, and examples to feel confident experimenting with new approaches to inclusive and accessible teaching.
These challenges show opportunities to build stronger institutional systems that value accessible pedagogy and support instructors in making their teaching more inclusive.
Next Steps and Future Directions
Our team will work with student affairs units at the University of Illinois Chicago to support their use of plain language in communicating with students about campus resources. After completing a plain-language audit of selected materials and surveying staff about current communication practices, we will hold focus groups with students to identify barriers to understanding. Using these insights, the research team will co-design revised materials with plain language strategies. Finally, the revised materials will be implemented in partnership with staff, accompanied by a toolkit and training session to promote ongoing use of plain language across campus.
We see several promising directions for future pedagogical work, including opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know by explaining course content in plain language and by promoting plain-language communication. Using plain language is a valuable skill across fields and career goals. Research on plain language pedagogy is still needed. We hope to explore how plain language affects the learning outcomes of diverse students across different disciplines and investigate how faculty training, student co-design, and artificial intelligence tools might support the process of creating PLSs. Plain language has the potential to make higher education more equitable, welcoming, and effective for all learners. By treating plain language as an essential part of pedagogy, we can move closer to building learning environments where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.