A Writing Midwife: The Instructor’s Role in a Process-Oriented English Writing Class in Korea

This study aims to provide a detailed description of the instructor’s roles in a process-oriented English writing class. The researcher extracted the roles of the instructor from the learners’ perspective, based on data collected from 13 college students who participated in an English writing class. Through inductive analysis of open-ended questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and journal writing materials, the following five roles were identified: writing midwife, writing counselor, new writing habit trainer, writing coordinator, and English teacher. Among these roles, the four categories excluding writing midwife are similar to those found in metaphor studies of general English instructors’ roles. Unlike the four traditional instructor-centered roles, the writing midwife, which finds its theoretical basis in the Socratic method of instruction, was found to play a critical role in helping students identify and solve problems in their writing on their own. The researcher concludes that process writing instructors need to demonstrate patience to become a good writing midwife and offers one suggestion for writing instructors. (Changwon National University)