Some academic essays follow a very specific structure.
For example, many social science reports follow the APA format, which begins with an abstract, followed by an introduction, a methods section, a results section, and a discussion section. Your teacher may have a particular structure in mind for your assignment. Be sure you know what structure you are expected to follow before you start drafting. Your introduction should focus your readers' attention, introduce the subject of the paper, and give the paper's thesis. The body of your paper should explain and defend your thesis using well-developed paragraphs.