Running head: REFLECTION ON TEACHING ASSISTANT WORK 1

Reflection on Teaching Assistant Work

Xiayu Guo

Colorado State University

REFLECTION ON TEACHING ASSISTANT WORK 2

During the 2018 spring semester, I assisted Dr. Luciana Marques with teaching her E328

(Morphology, Phonology and Lexis) course. This is a compulsory course on undergraduate level

in English department. Although I only worked for 8 weeks, I learned a lot. I believe this in a

valuable experience for me.

My duty was grading papers, homework and attending class every week. If students had

any questions, I needed to answer them. These tasks are what I expected to do. I took the

morphology and phonology in graduate level class last year. The work I did in E328 was very

similar to what I learned. I felt good when I used my existing knowledge to solve students’

problems. Sometimes, students might ask questions that I was not sure, either. At that time, I

would discuss with Dr. Marques. This was also an opportunity for my knowledge and language

improvement. Additionally, I want to say something about grading homework. Before I started

the work, I thought grading homework simply means giving students points and finding their

mistakes. However, I identified students’ learning difficulties in homework. For example, in HW

3, they did not do very well on phonological rules and allophone. I talked with Dr. Marques and

she got this feedback. In some way, I think I was working as a connection between students and

professor.

In my job application and interview, I said that I wanted to improve my academic

knowledge and know how to answer students’ questions clearly and accurately. This course is

abstract and theoretical. Students always had many questions and some questions were not easy

to answer. Therefore, I had to learn many things by myself or ask the professor. During this

process, I improve my academic knowledge. Moreover, I could answer students’ questions

accurately after I understood the particular part of the textbook and class. Therefore, the work

generally enhanced the objectives in my application.

REFLECTION ON TEACHING ASSISTANT WORK 3

This work is very helpful for my study and future career. When I took morphology and

phonology class last year, the focus was on morphology, but for E328, the condition is totally

opposite. The professor assigned much homework on phonology. I attended class every week

and read materials as students did. After a semester, I learned many new things about phonology.

The most helpful thing is the Atlas. This is an interesting website that shows different dialects

and accents in the North American, such as caught-cot merger, pin-pen merger and vowel shift in

northern cities. In terms of career development, I think this work taught me that as a teacher, I

am supposed to study with my students. I cannot just be satisfied with what I have learned in the

past. It is impossible for me to know everything about morphology and phonology, but it is

possible for students to ask me everything. I still remember one day my student asked me a

question about compounds. He was not sure about bracketing paradox. Both the professor and

the textbook do not talk much about this theory. I Googled bracketing paradox, read some

research and discussed with the professor. Fortunately, I explained this theory to this student

correctly and he could understand my explanation. I think in the future, I also cannot stop my

steps on learning more things in my academic discipline.

If I have another similar oppotunity, I would like to refine the process on helping students

on answering questions because I do not think I answered some questions very well. For

example, I was confused about allophones, so I answered students questions a little vague.

Maybe they could understand, but I didn’t explain very well.