From Assurance to Participation: Five Stages of a Linguistic Journey in São Paulo

“Ninguém caminha sem aprender a caminhar, sem aprender a fazer o caminho caminhando.” — Paulo Freire

Introduction: Becoming a Language Learner Again

There is something humbling about becoming a language learner again after spending decades teaching languages. For more than thirty years, I have occupied the position of the teacher: explaining vocabulary, designing communicative activities, correcting errors, developing curricula, assessing proficiency, and encouraging learners to take risks with language. I have often told students that language is learned through use, interaction, exposure, and meaningful communication. Yet knowing something intellectually as a teacher is not necessarily the same as experiencing it personally as a learner.

My recent trip to São Paulo, Brazil, provided me with an unexpected opportunity to return to the other side of the linguistic equation. I traveled with my wife knowing some Portuguese, much of it acquired empirically and independently rather than through sustained formal instruction. I did not arrive in Brazil with the intention of demonstrating linguistic mastery. I wanted to communicate, understand, navigate, ask questions, buy things, talk to people, and experience the language as part of everyday life.

What happened during those days made me reconsider some of my own assumptions about language learning. My Portuguese was far from perfect. I transferred words and structures from Spanish. I sometimes constructed expressions that were understandable but unnatural. I occasionally searched unsuccessfully for words I knew I had encountered. Yet I communicated. More importantly, I discovered that communication itself became one of the mechanisms through which my Portuguese developed.

Looking back at my experiences, I can identify five stages in this linguistic journey: a) assurance, b) interaction, c) noticing, d) perspective, and e) participation. These stages should not be understood as a universal sequence through which every language learner must pass. Rather, they represent the progression I experienced as I moved from wondering whether I could communicate in Portuguese to recognizing that I could learn from virtually every interaction around me.

My experience resonates with several important perspectives in second-language acquisition (SLA), particularly the roles of interaction, noticing, attention, cross-linguistic influence, conceptual categorization, and participation. Interactionist approaches, for example, emphasize the opportunities for input, negotiation, output, feedback, and attention that interaction can provide to language learners (Mackey & Goo, 2013). Likewise, research on noticing has emphasized the importance of learners' attention to linguistic form in the process through which input becomes available for learning (Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990). My São Paulo experience therefore became more than a vacation. It became a personal experiment in experiential language learning.

Stage One: Assurance — “I Can Communicate”

Stage
1	Assurance	→	self-efficacy / affective factors
2	Interaction	→	Interaction Hypothesis
3	Noticing	→	Noticing Hypothesis
4	Perspective	→	linguistic relativity / accommodation
5	Participation	→	situated learning / investment / willingness to communicate

My first significant linguistic experience occurred at a Pão de Açúcar supermarket. I was paying for our purchases when I had a brief conversation with an older sweet female cashier. At the end of the interaction, she told me that I spoke Portuguese very well. She also taught me a word that I had not known before: sacola, a shopping bag. Objectively, sacola is not a particularly sophisticated lexical item. Yet I remember it because it was not presented to me as vocabulary. It was connected to a person, an object, a place, an interaction, and a successful communicative episode. The word entered my memory through experience.

More important, however, was the cashier's comment about my Portuguese. Her affirmation changed something in me. Before that moment, I possessed Portuguese. After that moment, I began to trust my Portuguese. The distinction is important. Language learners frequently evaluate themselves according to an imagined standard of correctness: Do I have enough vocabulary? Is my pronunciation accurate? Is my grammar correct? Am I going to make a mistake? These questions can become so dominant that learners hesitate to communicate until they feel sufficiently prepared.

My experience suggested the opposite relationship: communication can produce the confidence necessary for further communication. This resonates with Bandura's (1997) concept of self-efficacy. People's beliefs about their capacity to perform a task influence whether they attempt it, how much effort they invest, and how persistently they continue when difficulties arise. In language learning, communicative success can therefore become more than an outcome; it can become evidence that encourages additional participation.

The cashier did not tell me that my Portuguese was grammatically flawless. She told me, in effect, that I was understandable. That distinction liberated me. And I began to understand that my objective did not need to be:

I need to speak perfect Portuguese.

It could instead be:

My Portuguese is sufficient to connect with another person.

That was my first stage: assurance.

I had crossed an important psychological boundary. I was no longer merely a person studying Portuguese. I was becoming a person who could use Portuguese.

Stage Two: Interaction — “I Learn by Interacting”

Stage
1	Assurance	→	self-efficacy / affective factors
2	Interaction	→	Interaction Hypothesis
3	Noticing	→	Noticing Hypothesis
4	Perspective	→	linguistic relativity / accommodation
5	Participation	→	situated learning / investment / willingness to communicate

My second experience occurred in a store selling home decoration items. My wife had noticed a rug, and I wanted to ask about it. As I pointed toward it, I asked the salesclerk something like: “O que o nome de isso em português?” The clerk understood what I meant, although a more natural Portuguese formulation would have been “Como se chama isso em português?” The answer was tapis, like the word in French.

Later, while looking at different rugs upstairs, I attempted to use a comparative expression and said mais grande, clearly influenced by my mother tongue, Spanish, más grande. The clerk responded with the Portuguese form maior. Again, I had not studied tapis or maior because they happened to appear on a syllabus. I needed them because the environment had created a communicative problem. This is where Long's Interaction Hypothesis becomes particularly relevant. Interactionist approaches emphasize that conversational interaction can provide learners with input, opportunities to negotiate meaning, produce language, receive feedback, and direct attention toward linguistic forms (Long, 1996; Mackey & Goo, 2013).

What Long (1996) and Mackey & Good (2013) pointed out is precisely what happened to me. I produced language. The interlocutor understood me. The interaction continued. I encountered a more appropriate form. I noticed the difference. And the new form became available to me. The process was not:

learn → memorize → eventually use.

It was:

need → attempt → interact → receive input → notice → adjust → use.

The clerk and I also discussed language learning. When he discovered that I was an English teacher, he asked me about the secret to learning English. My answer was essentially that what I was experiencing at that moment, practicing with people who speak the language, was itself part of the answer. There was an interesting reversal in that conversation. I was the English teacher, but he was temporarily my Portuguese teacher.

That experience reminded me that language expertise does not reside exclusively in classrooms. Every competent speaker of a language possesses forms of knowledge that a learner may need: vocabulary, expressions, cultural conventions, pronunciation, pragmatic routines, and ways of categorizing everyday experience. Though the classroom can prepare us for interaction, interaction in real life gives classroom knowledge a reason to exist. In conclusion, my second stage, therefore, was interaction: I was beginning to understand that I did not need to wait until I knew more Portuguese in order to practice Portuguese. The practice itself was part of how I would know more.

Stage Three: Noticing — “Language Is Everywhere”

Stage
1	Assurance	→	self-efficacy / affective factors
2	Interaction	→	Interaction Hypothesis
3	Noticing	→	Noticing Hypothesis
4	Perspective	→	linguistic relativity / accommodation
5	Participation	→	situated learning / investment / willingness to communicate

The third stage emerged from an apparently trivial activity: shopping. My wife and I entered a Christmas store, despite the fact that Christmas still felt surprisingly early in the year. There, Portuguese surrounded us. I noticed papel higiênico, a phrase that resembles Spanish but differs in pronunciation. At the checkout, I heard próximo, used to indicate the next customer, followed by the familiar transactional formula: “Cartão de crédito ou de débito?”

Later, in another store, I encountered Disney characters from Beauty and the Beast. I recognized Cogsworth, Lumière, Mrs. Potts, and Chip. Through Chip, I learned or reinforced xícara, “cup.” I had apparently heard something resembling xicrinha, which introduced another interesting dimension: the diminutive suffix -inha.

Even the Portuguese title of the movie became an object of mental searching: A Bela e a Fera. I knew what the characters were. I knew the story. I knew the English title. Yet the Portuguese label did not immediately come to mind. This experience revealed an important distinction between recognition and retrieval. I could recognize the semantic and visual world, but the Portuguese lexical label was not yet equally accessible.

Schmidt's (1990) Noticing Hypothesis is particularly useful here. The theory proposes that attention to features of language plays an important role in their subsequent development as part of the learner's linguistic knowledge. Later research has continued to examine the relationships among attention, awareness, noticing, memory, and L2 development (Robinson, 1995).  Because of this, I realized that São Paulo was constantly presenting me with potential input. But input alone was not enough. I had to notice it. That distinction became one of the most important lessons of the trip.

The supermarket, the store, the restaurant, the street, the signs, the checkout counter, the Uber ride, and the products around me were all potential language lessons. But they became lessons because I was paying attention. In other words, I was converting input into intake. A word such as xícara became especially memorable because it was attached to something meaningful: a Disney character, a childhood memory involving my daughter, a gift I was buying, and an interaction with a salesperson.

The vocabulary was no longer abstract. It had a story, which led me to a broader realization: Language is everywhere, but learning requires noticing. Immersion does not automatically produce learning. An attentive learner immersed in meaningful experience, however, can transform an ordinary environment into an enormous collection of micro-lessons.

Stage Four: Perspective — “Another Language Can Frame Reality Differently”

Stage
1	Assurance	→	self-efficacy / affective factors
2	Interaction	→	Interaction Hypothesis
3	Noticing	→	Noticing Hypothesis
4	Perspective	→	linguistic relativity / accommodation
5	Participation	→	situated learning / investment / willingness to communicate

My fourth stage was perhaps the most intellectually provocative. I was on a mission to buy camisas de futebol, and clothing stores repeatedly forced me to reinterpret familiar categories. In English, I was accustomed to seeing sizes such as L, M, and S. In Brazil, I encountered G, M, and P, grande, médio, and pequeno. The commercial system was familiar, but the linguistic representation of that system was different. Likewise, clothing departments were organized through categories such as: masculino, feminino, infantil.

At one point while visiting Japão Libertade, São Paulo’s international district, my wife was looking at some Japanese-style blouses. I attempted to ask whether the store had them for women. My formulation was imperfect, something like:

“Somente tem para meninas, não para mulheres?”

The salesclerks understood what I meant, but one supplied the local category: feminino. That small moment was significant. I had entered the environment with categories available through Spanish and English. The Brazilian environment offered another way of organizing the same commercial reality.

This does not mean that Portuguese creates an entirely different reality or that speakers of different languages live in separate cognitive universes. Strong versions of linguistic determinism are not supported by contemporary research. Nevertheless, research into linguistic relativity and conceptual transfer suggests that language can influence categorization, attention, and ways of conceptualizing experience (Bylund & Athanasopoulos, 2014; Odlin, 2005). More recent work likewise examines how learning an additional language may provide new ways of describing and processing objects and events. To conclude, this shopping situation helped me understand my own experience more precisely. Portuguese was not simply giving me different words for things I already knew. Sometimes it was making me attend to things differently.

My Spanish was particularly interesting in this process. It was both an enormous advantage and a frequent source of interference. Cuero helped me understand couro. Papel higiênico was immediately recognizable. Yet estrangeiros could become extranjeiros, and férias could become feiras. Mais grande seemed logical because Spanish had made that structure available to me, even though Portuguese prefers maior.

My previous languages were therefore not disappearing. They were participating in the construction of Portuguese. This is why I now see my fourth stage as perspective. Learning Portuguese did not require me to abandon Spanish or English. Instead, it required me to become increasingly aware that the linguistic categories I brought with me were not the only possible ways of interpreting the environment.

The Portuguese environment could, and sometimes did, shake the categories I thought were obvious. That may be one of the most intellectually valuable experiences an additional language can provide.

Stage Five: Participation — “I Become More Confident by Participating”

Stage
1	Assurance	→	self-efficacy / affective factors
2	Interaction	→	Interaction Hypothesis
3	Noticing	→	Noticing Hypothesis
4	Perspective	→	linguistic relativity / accommodation
5	Participation	→	situated learning / investment / willingness to communicate

The fifth stage emerged most clearly during my conversations with Uber drivers. These conversations became some of the richest sources of linguistic and cultural information during the trip. My first important interaction was with Daniel, the driver who picked us up after our arrival in Guarulhos. The conversation began with something wonderfully human: I discovered that he had the same name we had chosen for our first son. That coincidence created a connection. I then explained that we were foreigners, that we were on vacation in São Paulo, and that we wanted to buy shoes: “Somos estrangeiros, estamos de férias em São Paulo e queremos comprar sapatos.”

Daniel immediately asked whether the shoes were for working in an office or for walking. That question generated another useful piece of language: “Compre sapatos Democrata; são muito bons e de puro couro.” I already knew cuero in Spanish. Daniel gave me the Portuguese word: couro. Near Catedral da Sé, I eventually bought the Democrata shoes. Once again, a word had been acquired through a meaningful chain:

need → conversation → vocabulary → action → memory.

The word couro was not simply “learned.” It became part of a story.

Another driver, João, gave me what I jokingly called another Portuguese lesson. He explained the relationship among pinga, cachaça, and aguardente. He also helped me understand distinctions involving galo, galinha, pintinho, pingo and frango. At the end of the ride, I thanked him: “Obrigado pela aula de português.” The statement was spontaneous, but it captured exactly what was happening. The Uber driver was not formally my teacher. Yet he was teaching me.

This is consistent with broader sociocultural perspectives on learning, in which knowledge is developed through participation in social activity rather than simply transmitted from an expert to a passive learner. Ellis (2008), for example, examines interaction in SLA not only through the Interaction Hypothesis but also through sociocultural theory and processing perspectives.

Then came Guilherme. He suggested that if a Brazilian spent sufficient time in Costa Rica, exposure to Spanish would probably encourage that person to begin using Spanish in order to communicate with Costa Ricans. I realized that he was describing exactly what had been happening to me. I did not need to understand every word in Portuguese. My personal estimate was that I understood approximately 80% of what the drivers said. That was not a formal measurement of proficiency. It was my subjective feeling that I understood enough to follow the conversation, infer meaning, respond, ask questions, and continue.

João eventually asked me: “Você entende tudo o que eu digo?” I answered approximately: “Sim, eu posso compreender muito o que você diz.” A more natural formulation might be “Sim, eu entendo bastante do que você fala” or “Sim, eu consigo entender muita coisa do que você fala.” But once again, the important fact was not that my sentence was perfect. It worked! And this may be the central lesson of the entire trip: I discovered that communicative confidence does not necessarily emerge after linguistic mastery. It can emerge through successful participation despite incomplete mastery.

That creates a powerful cycle:

a)    I participate because I am confident enough.

b)   I become more confident because I participate.

c)    I understand more because I participate.

d)   Because I understand more, I participate more.

Participation therefore became both the result and the cause of my linguistic development.

From Five Experiences to One Linguistic Journey

Looking back, the five stories no longer appear to me as unrelated travel anecdotes. They represent a progression in my relationship with Portuguese.

1. Assurance: “I can communicate.”	The cashier's affirmation gave me permission to trust my emerging Portuguese.
2. Interaction: “I learn by interacting.”	The rug-store conversation demonstrated that real communication creates opportunities for feedback and new language.
3. Noticing: “Language is everywhere.”	The Christmas store showed me that everyday environments are filled with linguistic resources, but that learners must notice them.
4. Perspective: “Another language can frame reality differently.”	The clothing stores demonstrated that Portuguese was not merely providing labels. It was introducing different ways of organizing familiar experiences.
5. Participation: “I become more confident by participating.”	The Uber drivers showed me that people themselves are perhaps the richest linguistic resources available to a learner.

Together, the five stages form a cycle:

Assurance → Interaction → Noticing → Perspective → Participation

But perhaps the arrow should ultimately return to the beginning:

Participation → Assurance.

The more I participated, the more evidence I accumulated that I could communicate. That renewed assurance encouraged further participation. The journey was therefore not linear. It was recursive.

What My Portuguese Mistakes Taught Me

One of the most valuable aspects of the experience was that my mistakes became visible to me in ways that are sometimes difficult to appreciate as a teacher. I said things that reflected Spanish:

mais grande instead of maior;

cuero before learning couro;

feiras instead of férias.

I produced expressions that were understandable but not necessarily idiomatic:

“O que o nome de isso em português?”

“Somente tem para meninas, não para mulheres?”

“Eu posso compreender muito o que você diz.”

Yet these mistakes did not prevent communication. They became hypotheses about Portuguese. The Brazilian speakers around me did not always explicitly correct me. Sometimes they simply responded using the form that would have been more natural. Their responses provided me with linguistic evidence.

This is one of the reasons that interaction is so powerful for language learning. Research on interaction has emphasized the interconnected roles of input, negotiation, output, feedback, and attention. As a teacher, I have always known this proposition theoretically. As a learner, I experienced it viscerally.

The Teacher Became the Student

Perhaps the greatest lesson of São Paulo was not about Portuguese at all. It was about learning. I have spent many years encouraging students to communicate even when their language is imperfect. I have told them that mistakes are part of learning. I have designed communicative activities in which students must negotiate meaning, ask questions, interpret unfamiliar language, and respond spontaneously.

In São Paulo, I experienced my own advice.

I became the student who sometimes did not know the word. I became the student who transferred Spanish. I became the student who recognized a word but could not immediately retrieve it. I became the student who constructed a sentence that was grammatically imperfect but communicatively successful. And I became the student who realized that a person who is not formally a teacher can nevertheless teach enormously valuable lessons.

This experience has made me reconsider what we sometimes mean when we say that students need more practice. Perhaps practice is not simply the repetition of language that has already been taught. Perhaps practice is the experience of needing language in order to accomplish something meaningful.

I did not practice couro because my teacher had assigned ten repetitions. I needed couro because I wanted shoes. I did not practice xícara because it was vocabulary in Unit 6. I encountered it because I was looking at a Disney character. I did not practice feminino because it appeared on a vocabulary list. I needed to understand how the store organized its clothing.

 

The environment created the need. The need created attention. Attention created noticing. Interaction created feedback. And the experience created memory.

Conclusion: What São Paulo Taught Me About Language Learning

I went to São Paulo intending to practice Portuguese. I came back with something more valuable: a renewed understanding of what it means to learn a language. My five stages, assurance, interaction, noticing, perspective, and participation, show me that language learning is not confined to classrooms, textbooks, lessons, or planned activities. These remain valuable, but they represent only part of my learning ecology. The other part is life itself.

A supermarket cashier can teach sacola. A salesperson can teach tapis and maior. A Christmas display can teach próximo and xícara. A clothing store can challenge assumptions about how categories are organized: masculino, feminino, intanfil. An Uber driver can teach couro, cachaça, pinga, aguardente, and distinctions involving galinha and frango.

More importantly, these people can provide something a textbook cannot easily provide: a reason to communicate.

My greatest realization, therefore, is that confidence may not be the final product of language learning. It may be one of the conditions that makes continued learning possible. The learner who discovers, “I can communicate,” becomes more willing to communicate. The learner who communicates encounters new language. The learner who notices new language begins to expand linguistic resources. Those resources can alter the way the learner attends to and categorizes experience. And participation then generates further confidence.

Thus, the journey can be represented as:

Assurance → Interaction → Noticing → Perspective → Participation → renewed Assurance.

The circle continues. Perhaps this is what I brought home from São Paulo, not simply a larger Portuguese vocabulary, but a different understanding of myself as a language learner.

For a few days, I was no longer primarily the teacher. I was the learner. And being the learner reminded me of something that years of teaching can sometimes make easy to forget:

We do not become ready to use a language and then begin participating. In many cases, we participate first, and through that participation, we gradually become ready.

São Paulo did not simply give me opportunities to practice Portuguese. It gave Portuguese opportunities to change me. 

San José, Costa Rica

Tuesday, October 6, 2026

Blog Post #591

 

 

📚 References

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Schmidt, R. W. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 129–158.