This study examines first-year Japanese university students and their teachers' perceptions on the benefits and challenges of individual writing tutorials which were a required part of an academic writing course. The most common problems about student writing addressed in these tutorials included supporting details and evidence for body paragraphs, development of a thesis statement, paper organization, development of an outline prior to writing the first draft, development of topic sentences, and coherence/unity within the paper. The study found these tutorials to be beneficial from both teachers' and students' point of view, especially because face-to-face tutorials facilitate higher-quality feedback both in terms of comment generation and comprehension as well as providing personalized scaffolding for students. In addition, the study found that individual tutorials aid in critical thinking and autonomous learning strategy development. Despite the overwhelmingly positive role writing tutorials play in facilitating students' academic writing development, the teachers find them extremely timeconsuming and mentally demanding. The teachers, however, attest to the positive impact attending tutorials have on students' essay assignment grades.
An increasing number of Japanese university students are faced with the need to not only improve their English communicative skills for their global futures but also to become able to handle academic materials in English. Many Japanese universities and their English as a Foreign Language programs are moving towards English for Academic Purposes curricula. As a direct result of this, EFL teachers are given the task of preparing their students to write academic papers in English. This is a huge burden on many of these teachers ; helping to generate students who are able to write coherent and well-developed papers in academic register. While many universities are acknowledging this by providing help to teachers, for example by establishing writing centers, not enough is done to explore the best ways to prepare the students for this demanding task of becoming a proficient academic writer in English.
One successful way of meeting student needs involves writing conferencing. This one-toone strategy has been prominent in L1 writing for a long time but has become more popular in L2 writing as well. As L2 writing instruction transitioned from product-oriented instruction to process-writing instruction, individual writing conferencing also found its place in L2 writing. However, it is still underutilized in the field and not enough research has explored the benefits of including it in L2 writing curricular. Incorporating individual writing conferencing into EFL writing instruction in Japan however has the potential to provide a powerful learning tool for students to develop their academic writing skills.
This study explores one such scenario. It investigates the perceptions of Japanese first-year university students and their writing instructors on individual writing tutorials that are mandatory and part of an academic writing course. Writing tutorials are used synonymously with the expression writing conferences in this paper.

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