KJCKorea
Journal Central

This paper aims to study the need for, and the application of, story-telling in self-expressive writing education, as well as to discuss the appropriate arrangement of instructors to guide such an education. The area of self-expressive writing education has sought to establish the ego-identity of the learner, with an ever-growing consensus that the ego-identity should not be established in any permanent way. However, the consideration for ‘growth’ paradigm represented by self-growth is weak: following the psychoanalytic lesson that the affirmation of ego-identity rests on the premise of ego-identity establishment, self-expressive writing education should focus on the idea of ‘expression’ rather than ‘growth’. Such an ego-identity can be understood as a self-narrative, which inevitably follows the conventional structure of story-telling as a communication framework, serving as the basis for self-expression. From the viewpoint of <The Poetics of Aristoteles >, the core element of such a conventional structure is ‘plot’, and it can only be effective as a story-telling if the ‘event’ related to the subject is appropriately organized. In self-expressive writing, ego-identity establishment and storytelling of self narratives are inseparable processes, and therefore the instructor must position oneself accordingly. Since the learner should be able to actively compose one’s self-narrative while following the guidance of the instructor to select and arrange the proper elements of story-telling, the instructor must therefore be at a position to ask appropriate questions as a guide and a reader. Such a positioning can be fundamentally achieved through a question-and-answer teaching method.

self-expressive writing education, storytelling, ego-identity, event, self narrative, The Poetics of Aristoteles