Dynamic Assessment is a way of developing language skills where teaching and learning are combined into one process (Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994). This paper reports on a part of the dissertation study of adults learning English as L2, exploring the potential of Group Dynamic Assessment (G-DA) (Poehner, 2009) for diagnostics, and promoting the development of the L2 adult learners listening skill in English (Ableeva, 2010). The aim of the paper is to discuss the situations where learners provide the correct answer, while the understanding of this answer is lacking. I will support the theoretical premise of dynamic assessment that task completion by itself does not necessarily mean understanding and, similarly, that learners not completing a task does not mean that learner development has not occurred. To address this challenge, I propose the framework of Dynamic Assessment of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (SCT) which views teaching and assessment as an integral process (Poehner, 2008; 2009; Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994; DeBoer & Leontjev, 2020) inform assessment. In DA Teaching and Assessment are considered as two separate concepts but ONE longitudinal interwoven process, despite the traditional view of them as two different concepts in education: teaching is a process of ‘filling in the empty vessels’ and assessment is a one-time event on ‘measuring’ the results of teaching. Most contexts are focused on assessment and feedback ofthe product of learning (e.g., Leontjev, 2022; Mäkipää, 2021).

The main aim of this presentation is to analyse the process of development of listening skills in adult second language learners in group settings through the framework of Group Dynamic Assessment (G-DA) answering the following question for this paper:

1)   WHY the correct answer by a learner does not always mean development?

The definition of Dynamic Assessment that I use in my work is “Dynamic assessment integrates assessment and instruction into a seamless, unified activity aimed at promoting learner development through appropriate forms of mediation that are sensitive to the individual‘s (or in some cases a group’s) current abilities.” (Lantolf & Poehner, 2004). Dynamic Assessment has not yet become a mainstream practice in educational institutions (Leontjev, 2022). However, there are research projects that incorporate it into the Language Diagnostic protocol (Dynamic Diagnostic Language Assessment (DD-LANG) project by the University of Jyvaskyla). These and many other works have been focused on individual schoolchildren or university students, there are few studies of adult development with the application of Dynamic Assessment.

This research question was the result of a bigger PhD project that involved 44 participants, 60 hours of video-recorded Group-Dynamic Assessment (G-DA) sessions as well as individual DA sessions. In this paper I will focus on several cases when the correct answer is provided by the learner, lacking understanding, and how the mediator was able to both reveal a lack of understanding but also learners’ partial knowledge and reasons for their struggle and promote the learner’ development through provision of mediation sensitive to learners’ ZPD. I will lead the audience through the mediator’s interactions with the DA of learners, interpreting these with reference to the theory of G-DA and will discuss the study implications for teachers and practitioners through practical steps to promote the development of listening in adults.

The collected data were analysed qualitatively – group dynamic assessment sessions and individual sessions, these sessions were transcribed and need further deep analysis of patterns of mediator’s (teacher’s) moves and adult learners’ responses, and there was a reverse process as well – learners’ initiation of the learning process and mediator’s responses. The mediator’s moves and learner’s moves have been studied before and there is a scale of moves from the most explicit to the most implicit ones. This scale is quantified for statistical analysis and will be extended based on the empirical data of the study. This gives us an idea of which moves and responses are the most common and most effective and can be recommended for the future.

As the result of this research I drew practical implications on using DA as a diagnostic tool to promote learners’ development. Mediational moves are put on a cline based on the explicitness of the mediation, for example, the most implicit move is being present in the classroom and the most explicit move is providing an explanation to the learners. Reciprocity moves are put on a cline based on the idea of agency of the learners, where minimal agency is one extreme of the cline (for example, when learners are silent and not responding to the mediator) and the maximum agency extreme (for example, when learners are providing the explanation for the answer themselves).

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