The Role of Problematizing Tutoring in the Development of EFL Students’ Writing Skills1

Abstract

After analyzing and reflecting upon the errors students made when facing English writing activities, it was proposed to implement problematizing tutoring sessions as a strategy to assist them in overcoming their hurdles when writing. The participants of the study were 37 third-semester Law students from Universidad Santo Tomás (Villavicencio-Colombia). The main theoretical constructs that supported this research were problematizing tutoring and writing as a process. The study was developed under the framework of the qualitative research approach and implemented under the action research cycle. Hence, the instruments to collect data were the tutor’s journal, students’ artifacts, and a survey. On campus, this conducted research has contributed to inciting more inquiry about students’ writing skills and transforming the habitual tutoring approach as a teaching and counseling process into a problematizing learning scenario. The results suggest that among law students, problematizing tutoring sessions are prone to being conceived as a legal English environment, a creative space, and a problem-solving context.