How to Train Dragon Naturally Speaking Quickly And Easily.
Chances are you want to increase your word count. Chances are you want those words come quickly and easily. Chances are that if there were a computer program that translated words directly from your brain to your word processor, you would take them.
There isn’t a computer program that can get words straight out of your brain. But there is the next best thing; there is dictation software like Dragon Naturally Speaking which will transcribe your spoken word into text on the screen.
Unfortunately, Dragon Naturally Speaking is not without its flaws. It’s a pretty resource intensive software, and it isn’t free, but above all things, it isn’t really that accurate. At least not out of the box.
Unfortunately, I have spent pretty much my whole day trying to get this piece of software to go from something that I used occasionally to make rough drafts, to a piece of software that I use every day that would increase my word count hugely over time.
It’s been a pain in the backside. The training modules that the software itself provides, where you read from a famous text, only go so far towards training the piece of software to recognise your voice. I think that my voice isn’t particularly accented, so I imagine a lot of people would have a lot more troubles with the software than I did.
And I have a huge amount of software trouble with Dragon Naturally Speaking.
However, after a day of experimenting and teaching myself how to train Dragon Naturally Speaking, I think I’ve found a pretty good way of getting this software to be very accurate-at least a lot more accurate than it has been for me for the months I’ve been using it.
(Please note that I’m using an older version of the software. I’m using Dragon Naturally Speaking 12. It might be that the thirteenth version of this software is a lot more accurate out of the box. I don’t know.)
How to train Dragon Naturally Speaking using this one sneaky method.
Something I’ve used before when it comes to Dragon Naturally Speaking is the transcribe feature. When I am not sitting at the computer on my desk, I use a free app called “Smart Voice Recorder” with my tablet in order to dictate rough versions of things I’m writing.
It never occurred to me that I could train Dragon Naturally Speaking using this feature.
When you train Dragon Naturally Speaking, you use the ‘correct’ function. So, when you are speaking to your computer, if it gets a word wrong then you say “correct” and then say the right word again. Hopefully this time it will replace the incorrect word with the correct word. This is really time consuming.
Instead, what I did today was recorded a fifteen minute long piece of writing that I’d already written by hand. In retrospect, you could probably just read something that you’ve got in a book in front of you. The important point is to not speak directly into your document using Dragon Naturally Speaking.
Instead, what you should do is record your dictation of the document into a .mp3 file. Then, you need to use the transcribe feature in Dragon Naturally Speaking. In the version I’m using, you will find it in the place I’ve highlighted in the picture below:
The second step is to go through your dictated version and use the ‘correct’ tool. This will be a lot easier because you will have the words in front of you that are correct. You won’t have to worry about playing back the file to see where the mistakes are, or try and remember what you actually said.
Why are we using this method instead of the other training methods available?
Something that bugs me about Dragon Naturally Speaking’s inbuilt training system is that it gives you absolutely no data whatsoever about the accuracy of the training. It doesn’t tell you how accurate the speech is and it doesn’t tell you anything that might actually help you create a more accurate piece of software.
This method does this though. You know exactly how accurate it is because you have the written material, and you have the result, so you know where the mistakes are. But that’s not the only reason to use this method.
Once you have done this once, what you should do is use exactly the same audio file that you recorded in the first place and see how much more accurate the dictation was. Then, repeat the same process again. I found after the first time running the software that most of the errors are corrected when accounted for in the new transcribed piece. I corrected it again, and the program became even more accurate.
If you do this a few times, then you will train Dragon Naturally Speaking to a much stronger extent than you would using their training method, or doing it as you go along with your actual writing. Yes, it takes in time, but a lot less time than you would otherwise spend.
Why bother?
I am fast typist. Yet, I don’t even come anywhere close to typing at the rate I speak. I can easily speak at the rate of about hundred words a minute, even if I am thinking and speaking on the spot. I could do this until my throat got sore or I lost my voice. In short, it is far quicker than typing.
To train Dragon Naturally Speaking is to get the closest thing you can to having a direct download from your brain to the computer. The one big problem with Dragon Naturally Speaking is its lack of accuracy. This method to train Dragon Naturally Speaking is a way to quickly improve the accuracy of the program without having to do something ridiculously complicated.