An atmosphere full of conflicts leads to uncertainty; it can even lead to difficulties in relationships and misunderstanding within the group. It is important to mention that in a classroom where there are too many disagreements and unresolved issues, there are problems of self-esteem for some of its members, which may be the cause of aggression towards others and lead to interpersonal conflicts, too. As the environment in the classroom depends on each student and their attitude, as welas a definition of one´s role within the group, a harmonic environment is constructed by collaborative and respectful behavior towards oneself and all others. This project is a design of a program based on empowerment strategies of different pedagogical and psychological influences, aimed to improve interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships in the classroom. The term empowerment in this context is understood as increasing an individual’s inner strength to make changes in their personal lives and their environment. The objective of this project is to achieve a peaceful environment and improve communication in the classroom through empowerment techniques. Empowerment techniques in this project include exercises for students in order to develop their aware ness about the importance of finding their unique role in the group and acting accordingly to search for a specific attitude for each member of the group that will not harm or disturb others; and to learn how to accept others, considering each student’s background.

Higher education focuses on promoting the training of autonomous, critical professionals who adapt to the ever-more demanding labor market. To achieve these objectives, it is necessary to rethink teaching practices in order to allow the student to be the main actor and modeler for their learning process. Previous studies based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory have shown that learning should be treated as a socio-cultural activity. Indeed, according to this approach, individual knowledge is firstly constructed at a social level. Peer review, for its part, is a learning tool based on the sociocultural approach. It allows students to achieve higher levels of autonomy and critical thinking. This research’s aim is, on the one hand, to analyze the effect of peer review on the quality of academic essays and, on the other, to examine the way in which linguistic and communicative competence in academic writing are affected. This experimental study was carried out with 68 level B1 + students (32 men and 36 women) in a private university in Ecuador during one academic year. After the statistical analysis, it is concluded that peer review has a positive impact on academic writing. However, the impact is higher in the communicative competence than in the linguistic competence. This result is aligned with previous research, which shows that students tend to prioritize message over form. Future research should investigate peer review’s long-term impact upon students and their ability to transfer skills acquired in English class to other subjects, or even to professional contexts.