What are the three types of dictation?

The three types of dictation in most teaching frameworks are exact dictation, where every word is written as spoken; meaning-based dictation, where the listener captures the sense rather than the wording; and self-dictation, where you speak your own thoughts to be written down.

Language classrooms lean on the first type for spelling and listening practice. Secretaries and transcriptionists historically worked the first and second. Self-dictation is the one that matters for modern work, because it is what you do every time you speak a message into your phone.

The different types share one requirement: something reliable has to do the writing. For self-dictation, that something is now software rather than a person.

Good dictation software makes the third type effortless.