I am the moderator of this group. I am a British born Canadian with thirteen years of experience teaching academic writing in a university. I'll start the ball rolling on this question. But I'd like others to add their two cents' worth, because it's a question worth asking... and answering. A hook is what you often see in commercial writing. For example, in a news story, the first paragraph is often not a description of the central issue of the news story, but is a personalized anecdote to spike your attention, an example of what happened to ONE INDIVIDUAL within the news story itself. Do you need this sort of thing in an academic paper? My usual answer is that, because we're talking here about an audience that has to read the paper whether or not their interest is "spiked," (in other words, they're reading it to be informed about the topic they're focused on in the first place, and not browsing around for something to occupy their time, as it were..) you should dive write in and IN YOUR FIRST THREE SENTENCES, GET RIGHT TO THE POINT. In my experience, some of the best students have objections to this idea though. Are you one of them ;-)?