This paper focuses on stereotyping in a comparison of Portuguese as a Second Language and Portuguese as a Foreign Language teaching, learning, and material. Current academic debate shows that stereotypes impact foreign language acquisition, despite the fact that categorizing the world helps us acknowledge the unknown. Yet, stereotypes can be a starting point to the exercise of deconstruction, common in High-Leverage Teaching Practice (HLTP) and applicable to any teaching approach, audience repertoire, or content alignment (GLISAN; DONATO, 2017). Stereotyping also occurs beyond classroom when externalized at a belonging-distancing dichotomy: the keener on the target culture, the more distant learners place themselves from the source culture. Findings indicate that categories of linguistic distance and identity status are only strongly biased by life repertoires, thus compromising any attempt of a pluricentric approach to Portuguese for international communication, if teaching, learning, and content evolve around best practices as model-outs and observations, rather than around deconstruction through HLTPs.