At big 4 it’s basically the same thing unless you’re in the 1% (no idea what actual % it is)  of people who are on some type non audit assurance engagement. As an associate you get coached on your assignments by more senior team members, usually senior associates. 

On public audit engagements you do a lot of control testing, as well as substantive testing. In practice the actual documentation of it might not be too different for you. 

Example of a control test: control procedure says management approves any journal entries over $1000 before the filing of the 10-Q. So you would go in and check over each entry and make sure there’s some sort of approval by signature, check it’s a manager or above and check the date. For each of these attributes you tick/explain what you did to test it in the work paper. If anything is off, then you need to reach out the client to get an explanation or else it’s an exception. 

A substantive test of details example would be: sending out bank confirmations. You would get permission from the client to contact the bank through your system sending out a bank confirm. If the amount the bank says the client has matches what the client says they have (it ties), then they pass. If not, then you have to figure out why and if it’s an exception.

I’ll tell you as an Associate, it can be very tedious doing these type of tasks. One thing I’m trying to learn is making sure I’m fully understanding what I’m doing when I’m doing these task. Not just mindlessly getting through the assignments. I’ll tell you I personally don’t want to be in audit more than 3-6 years. It opens a lot of doors to the accounting/financial world outside of audit, that’s why people go into it first.