reevaluating native speaker fallacy in english language education

Native speaker fallacy (nsf), which is the false belief that only native speakers of english can be effective teachers and users of the language (phillipson, 1992), is an ongoing issue in the field of language education. interestingly, native speaker fallacy is not only directed from native speakers to nonnative speakers of english; it is frequently projected by nonnative speakers toward their nonnative english-speaking counterparts (canagarajah,1999; rahman, 2021). my research aimed at finding out if the exhibition of nsf is a common phenomenon in the writing centers of five midwestern u.s. universities. the purpose of my research was to find out if international nonnative english-speaking students hesitate/refuse to work with international nonnative english-speaking writing tutors in writing centers because of their adherence to nsf. i utilized a mixed-method approach (survey+interviews) to find out if nsf is in fact an issue in the u.s. higher-ed writing centers. my data not only showed a stark presence of nfs and its exhibition from international students toward international tutors in writing center context, it gave me a new perspective on nsf, which suggests that individuals from the different circles of world englishes (kachru, 1991) may have different reasons for not wanting to collaborate with other international individuals. while the students from the expanding circle believe that only native speakers of english are effective teachers/tutors/users of the language (which aligns with the established definition), the students from the outer circle may believe that their own english is much better than just any other nonnative speaker of english—a postcolonial conditioning; this belief among this cohort assigns a slightly different meaning to native speaker fallacy, which needs rigorous discussion. new approaches—workshops, teaching tools, and talks, need to be designed to create awareness against nsf so as to create equity within settings of english language education.