Audio data that encodes an utterance of a user is received. It is determined that the user has been classified as a novice user of a speech recognizer. A speech recognizer setting is selected that is used by the speech recognizer in generating a transcription of the utterance. The selected speech recognizer setting is different than a default speech recognizer setting that is used by the speech recognizer in generating transcriptions of utterances of users that are not classified as novice users. The selected speech recognizer setting results in increased speech recognition accuracy in comparison with the default setting. A transcription of the utterance is obtained that is generated by the speech recognizer using the selected setting.