(Solved!) How to detect ai writing when english isn't my first language 🇪🇸➡️🇺🇸

[JaneCops]

Just wanted to share a little victory and say thanks to this community! I'm a Spanish speaker studying in the US, and I've always been self-conscious about my writing. I used DeepL to translate my ideas, which was fine, but I started using ChatGPT to "polish" my sentences. Then I got worried my professors would think the final product wasn't me. The tip about checking for very American idioms was a game-changer! I realized the AI was adding phrases I'd never even heard before. Now, I use it more sparingly and make sure the core argument and sentence flow are 100% mine. Understanding how to detect ai writing helped me become a better, more confident writer.

 

[WillMo]

The idiom issue you identified is fascinating because it reveals something important about AI: it doesn't have a consistent voice. It pulls from its entire training data, which includes everything from academic papers to Reddit comments to fanfiction. So when you ask it to "polish" your writing, it might randomly insert "it's raining cats and dogs" into a serious sociology paper because that phrase exists in its dataset.

Here's my advice for students in your situation:

1. Use AI for grammar, not style. Ask specific questions: "Check these sentences for subject-verb agreement" not "make this better"
2. Build your own phrase bank. When you read academic papers, save sentences that feel clear and professional. Mimic those, not AI
3. Record yourself explaining your argument. Then transcribe it (manually or with a tool). That transcription will sound like YOU, and you can clean it up from there

The goal isn't to write like a native speaker. The goal is to write like a clear, confident, intelligent version of YOU. Jane, it sounds like you're well on your way.