Dictation for Non-Native English Writers

Speak the meaning, fix the English after

Writing in a second language is slow because two hard tasks run at once: deciding what to say and building correct English while you say it. Dictation lets you do them one at a time.

1. Speak the whole message without stopping to fix wording.
2. Run one grammar pass for real errors.
3. Adjust register only if the message needs it.
4. Check names, numbers, and dates by hand.

Do not stop mid-take to hunt for a preposition. If you misspeak, correct yourself plainly ("Tuesday, sorry, Wednesday") and keep going; on Mac, Auri Voice's cleanup pass keeps only the correction. Accent is a smaller worry than most people expect: engines handle most accents well, and a steady pace into a close mic does more than changing your pronunciation. The speaking guide covers technique, including a test script you build from your own names and terms.

Two routes, chosen per message

Both routes produce sendable English, and they fail differently, so choose per message instead of settling on one rule.

Dictating in English keeps your voice in the message, including the directness that often makes non-native writing clearer than the hedged version a native colleague would produce. Translation gives you correct English fast, which is fine for routine messages; review the result whenever tone carries weight.

Route A: dictate in English, then fix the grammar

On Mac, press your Auri Voice shortcut, say the whole message, and press again; the cleanup pass removes filler and false starts before the text lands at your cursor. For grammar, select the text, press the Edit Mode shortcut, and say "Fix grammar and spelling." On iPhone, hold the Auri Keyboard mic and pick Clean, since out of the box Auri types the raw transcript, then tap Fix Grammar in the Auri Writing toolbar; it corrects your selection, or the whole draft when nothing is selected.

One dictated sentence, before and after:

You dictated: "I have sent you the document in the last week, please tell me if you need any informations."

After the grammar pass: "I sent you the document last week. Please tell me if you need any information."

Tense, preposition, countable noun: for any one writer the same few corrections repeat, which the practice loop below uses.

Grammar and rewrite are different jobs. Grammar covers articles, prepositions, tense, agreement, and punctuation; run it freely. A rewrite (Paraphrase in Auri Keyboard, with more than 20 styles) changes register and length; run it on purpose, and only when you can name what is wrong. Watch for added hedging: a polite rewrite can bury your request under three qualifiers, and a direct ask is easier on your reader even when it feels blunt in English.

Route B: speak your own language, then translate

On Mac:

1. Check that your engine covers your language. Fast Multilingual Dictation (Parakeet TDT v3), the default on Apple Silicon, transcribes 25 languages. If yours is missing, switch to Low-Latency Multilingual (Nemotron 3.5 ASR, 32 locales) or Auri Cloud (99 languages with auto-detect, needs a network) in Auri Voice's settings under Voice engine. The engine guide compares them.
2. Dictate the message in your language, in whatever app you are writing.
3. Select the text, press the Edit Mode shortcut, and speak the instruction: "Translate this into English." Edit Mode passes your spoken instruction to the AI provider, the same way "Make this more formal" works, and rewrites the selection in place.

On iPhone:

1. Set the recognition language in the Auri app under Keyboard > Keyboard Dictation > Recognition > Language. Auri Keyboard recognizes 58 languages, plus Auto-Detect.
2. Dictate the message.
3. Tap Translate in the Auri Writing toolbar. It translates the selection, or the whole draft when nothing is selected, into any of 31 languages, English included.

One iPhone detail trips people: keyboard language packs and the recognition language are separate settings, so switching the keyboard layout to French does not make dictation expect French. The multilingual guide explains the three language settings.

The words that still need your eyes

Dictation errors come in two kinds, and they need different fixes.

The engine heard wrong. Your name and hometown, colleague names from a third language, and technical terms your field borrowed rarely show up in speech training data, so the engine substitutes something common. Teach these once instead of fixing them weekly. In Auri Voice: Settings > Dictation > Text > Vocabulary, and the list works with every engine, multilingual ones included. In Auri Keyboard: Custom Vocabulary on the same Recognition screen, used by the Ultrafast, Supernova, Legacy, and Azura engines but not by Wizper or On-Device. The custom words guide has the full playbook.

You said the wrong word. False friends arrive spelled perfectly because you really said them: "actual" for "current" from German aktuell, or "assist" for "attend" from Spanish asistir. No vocabulary list helps, because the engine transcribed you faithfully. The grammar pass catches some from context; for the rest, keep a short list of the false friends that trip you and read for them before sending.

Dates get a check every time. 05/03 means March 5 to one reader and May 3 to another, so spell out the month for anything that matters.

A practice loop that improves your writing

The corrected version of your own sentences is good study material, because it is built from your actual errors.

1. Dictate the message and run the grammar pass.
2. Read the corrected version once, out loud if you can.
3. Note which correction repeats. Usually it is articles, prepositions, or tense.
4. Watch for that one pattern next week while you speak.

Hold one pattern at a time; a single rule watched for a week tends to stick. Reading the corrected text aloud also catches the places where a correction changed your meaning.

Speaking English out loud when colleagues can hear you

Speaking a second language out loud in a room where colleagues can hear you is a real obstacle, and it stops capable writers from ever trying dictation.

• Start at home or in a booked room, where nobody is a potential audience.
• Use short messages first. Thirty seconds of speech is easier than five minutes.
• A close mic lets you speak quietly, so volume stops being the issue.
• Headphones and a phone read as a call to anyone glancing over.
• Give it two weeks before you judge whether it fits your day.

Accuracy improves as the discomfort fades, because the hesitation and restarts that come from self-consciousness are what make a transcript messy. If the room never becomes comfortable, keep voice for the parts of the day that happen alone: the first draft of a long email at your desk in the morning, or notes on a walk. Part-time use still gets you most of the speed.

When to keep your own phrasing

Not every difference from native phrasing is an error. Some of it is what makes your writing efficient to read.

• Short direct sentences: keep them. They are clearer than the padded version.
• Asking plainly for what you need: keep it. Softening can obscure the ask.
• Your own examples and comparisons: keep them, even when they are unusual.
• Genuine grammar errors and wrong words: fix these.

Heavy polishing produces uniformity. When every message from every colleague arrives in the same smoothed register, nobody can tell who wrote what or what the writer actually meant. Fix the real errors and send the rest as you said it.

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