Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

Diagnose what you read
Revising sentences
Writing your paper

Once you understand how readers judge what they read, you also know why so much of what you must read seems so dense. Sometimes you struggle to understand academic writing because its content is difficult. But sometimes you struggle because the writer didn't write clearly. This next passage, for example, is the sort that might be found in any textbook:

17a. Recognition of the fact that systems differ from one language to another can serve as the basis for serious consideration of the problems confronting translators of the great works of world literature originally written in a language other than English.

But in half as many words, it means only this:

17b. Once we know that languages have different grammars, we can consider the problems of those who translate great works of literature into English.

So when you struggle to understand some academic writing (and you will), don't blame yourself, at least not at first. Diagnose its sentences. If they have long subjects stuffed with abstract nouns, expressing new information, the problem is probably not your inability to read easily, but the writer's inability to write clearly. If that is the case, then the tools we've given you for writing clearly will also help you unpack such dense prose.