As linguistic diversity increases on American campuses, writing center staffs are also becoming more diverse— although there has been little empirical research about non-native English speaking (NNS) tutors. Concerns about the native speaker fallacy, although prevalent in TESOL literature, are less documented in writing center studies. The primary purpose of this study is to determine what, if any, differences exist between the tutoring methods of native English-speaking (NES) and non-native English speaking (NNS) tutors and whether some of these differences might be ascribed to linguistic bias. In this study, eight writing center tutors, four NES and four NNS, were observed during sessions with one NES and one NNS writer each. Sixteen naturalistic sessions were transcribed and triangulated with interviews and exit surveys with all participants. Tutor language t-units from these sessions were coded into four broad categories and seven sub-categories. The results indicate that while NES and NNS tutors generally use similar types of language while tutoring, the NES tutors are more directive with NNS writers, reflecting traditional writing center training. NNS tutors are more directive overall, but are especially directive with NES writers. Results also indicate that, despite popular wisdom to the contrary, NNS tutors are less emotionally responsive while working with NNS writers than with native English speakers. The tutors and writers in this study did not indicate the native speaker fallacy as greatly impacting their sessions. Keywords : Non-native speakers of English, peer tutoring, writing, native speaker fallacy

Both creative writing and composition seek to teach writing, yet their pedagogical approaches are poles apart, especially concerning instructors. Creative writing instructors serve as “mentor-models,” whose authority comes from their writing practice rather than (only) departmental sanction. Despite potential pitfalls, a mentor-model approach could reaffirm composition instructors' identities as writers.