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