In this paper, we discuss some data from the project Conversation Table in Portuguese, developed in a university in the Southeast of China. The activity has provided the Chinese students of Portuguese as a foreign language the opportunity to interact in the target language in a less hierarchical environment comparing to what usually happens inside the classroom, where the teacher, most of the times, has the central role. The project has motivated the students to show some of their identities in the foreign language that were 'hidden' during the classes. The data will be analyzed according to the theoretical concepts of Applied Linguistics and Discourse Analysis.
chinese learners; Portuguese as a foreign language; identity