If English isn’t your first language, read this before you submit
This isn’t a reason to write less like yourself. It’s a reason to know what tends to trip a detector, and to keep the same evidence trail anyone would.
What the research actually found
A 2023 study found that widely used AI detectors consistently misclassified essays by non-native English writers as AI-generated — one detector flagged the majority of TOEFL essays by non-native speakers, against a near-zero false-positive rate on essays by native speakers. The likely cause is measurable: detectors reward sentence variety and vocabulary range that a learner’s writing, however honest, doesn’t always have yet.
What tends to trigger it
Evenly paced sentences, a narrower vocabulary range, and reliance on a smaller set of safe transitional phrases — all normal features of writing in a second language, and all things Litimus, like other detectors, measures as signals.
What to do about it
None of this means writing differently to fool a detector — that isn’t the goal, and it isn’t reliable anyway. What helps is the same thing that helps any student: a draft history showing the work took shape over time. If your institution allows it, mentioning that English is an additional language during a review conversation is a relevant fact, not an excuse.
If you do get flagged
Ask to see the reasons behind the score, not just the number. If the notes point at sentence rhythm or vocabulary spread rather than anything resembling copied or generated phrasing, that is a meaningful distinction worth raising.