In the introductory Academic English course Language and Use, students are expected to critically read a primary source, create a research question to ask of this source, and respond to that research question in a well-structured, comprehensive essay.

The first paragraph of the essay, the introduction paragraph, introduces the general topic and the primary source, and it typically ends with the thesis statement. The thesis statement is an answer to the research question. The thesis statement is the main idea of the entire paper; it is usually 1-2 sentences long, and it is clear and concise. The paragraphs that follow, the body paragraphs, each deal with a specific supporting idea for the thesis statement.

The following paragraph is an example of a student's introduction paragraph:

When we think of learning a language, we often have the act of strictly learning rules in mind. For example, to conjugate a verb in the second person in French we learn that most of the time the verbs in second person end with the letter "s". We think of language as being mostly well structured apart from a few exceptions. However, David Weinberger, an expert in his field, shows in his novel "Everything is Miscellaneous" (2008) that the theory and the actual usage of language’s neat categories deviate strongly from each other. Language is not as neatly organised as we might wish it to be. In fact, considering the organisation of language, language is indeed rather messy. To which degree this is the case will be shown through the following factors: Language having no Aristotelian definition, being organised in basic-level categories, these categories not having clear boundaries, and the prototype concept.