Attempts to extract text from a handwritten composition

I wanted to find a good way for students to get feedback on their hand-written compositions done in class as soon as possible after they handed them in. My initial idea was for students to take a photograph of the written work and then to upload it to a GenAI tool. It turned out that ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity could do this, but Claude, Copilot, Deepseek, Mistral and Llama said they couldn’t and asked me to provide a transcript.

The second problem was that the three tools that said they could extract text from the photo of a handwritten composition made on average 17 mistakes in 156 words! However, in most cases the 6 steps of feedback would still be useful despite the uncorrected misinterpretations of the handwritten text. I was a bit disappointed as I had had great hopes for the idea.

Then I had a second idea, which was to get students to record themselves reading their composition aloud using Turboscribe.ai which I would be asking them to use anyway to record their speaking as well. The resulting transcript only had one error in the 156 words, which was easy to correct by editing the transcript. From then on, the procedure was almost identical to the one I recommend with their speaking. It involved copying and pasting an adapted long prompt from Google drive into the Custom Prompt option of the ChatGPT menu in Turboscribe.

Here’s a link to the ChatGPT conversation: https://chatgpt.com/share/67bb85fd-702c-800b-94c8-bc032b3a6f92

The grades assigned by ChatGPT and Pearson’s Text Analyzer to the five different versions were similar, but only coincided exactly with two grades:

	ChatGPT	Pearson	ChatGPT	Pearson
Original	46.5	44	B1	B1
Correct errors	49.5	44	B1+	B1
Better same level	49.5	46	B1+	B1
Better next level	57.5	60	B2	B2
Better 2 levels up	61.5	63	B2+	B2

 There is still an obvious progression through the different versions:

Original B1 44	Corrected B1 44	Better B1 46	1 level up B2 60	2 levels up B2 63
The most important event that takes in the book I have read, Thirty-Nine Steps, is that the protagonist of the book was nobody in the first part of the story, and a strange meeting with a man who he didn't know changed all his LIVE. The strange thing is that the main character was in London for pleasure, and he was in a little apartment, and a very strange man came into the apartment and lived with the protagonist for a couple of weeks, and one day he found the strange man dead in the floor of the apartment with a knife in his heart. I think that the most important event in the entire book, because the protagonist could say no to the strange man and all his story of secret spies in Europe before the First World War, and the main character followed the steps of the spy. I like this book very much.	The most important event that takes place in the book I have read, Thirty-Nine Steps, is that the protagonist of the book was nobody in the first part of the story, and a strange meeting with a man who he didn't know changed all his life. The strange thing is that the main character was in London for pleasure, and he was in a little apartment, and a very strange man came into the apartment and stayed with the protagonist for a couple of weeks, and one day he found the strange man dead on the floor of the apartment with a knife in his heart. I think that this is the most important event in the entire book, because the protagonist could say no to the strange man and all his story of secret spies in Europe before the First World War, and the main character followed the steps of the spy. I like this book very much.	The most important event that takes place in the book I have read, The Thirty-Nine Steps, is when the protagonist starts as an ordinary person, but a strange meeting with a man he didn’t know changes his whole life. The strange thing is that the main character was in London for pleasure, staying in a small apartment, when a very unusual man came to his apartment and stayed with him for a couple of weeks. One day, he found this man dead on the floor of the apartment with a knife in his heart. I think this is the most important event in the entire book because the protagonist could have refused to listen to the strange man and his story of secret spies in Europe before the First World War, but instead, he decided to follow the spy’s steps. I like this book very much.	The most important event in the book I have read, The Thirty-Nine Steps, is when the protagonist, who seems like an ordinary person at the start of the story, experiences a life-changing event after meeting a stranger. The main character is in London for leisure, staying in a small apartment, when a very mysterious man arrives unexpectedly and stays with him for a couple of weeks. One day, the protagonist finds the man dead on the floor of the apartment with a knife in his heart. This shocking discovery leads him to realise that the stranger’s story about secret spies in Europe before the First World War is true. He could have ignored the man’s tale, but instead, he chooses to investigate, which leads him on a dangerous and thrilling adventure. I really enjoyed reading this book.	The most important event in the book I have read, The Thirty-Nine Steps, is when the protagonist, who begins the story as an ordinary man living a quiet life, is suddenly thrown into a world of danger and intrigue. While staying in London for leisure, he meets a mysterious stranger who arrives unexpectedly at his small apartment. The man is clearly anxious and claims to know about a secret plot involving spies in Europe just before the outbreak of the First World War. The protagonist reluctantly lets him stay, but his life takes a dramatic turn when he discovers the man dead on the floor of his apartment with a knife in his heart. This shocking event forces him to confront the possibility that the man’s story was true. Fearing for his own safety and driven by curiosity, he decides to investigate the conspiracy himself. His decision sets off a thrilling chain of events as he follows the trail of the spies, facing numerous dangers along the way. This unexpected twist makes the story truly exciting, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
156 words	159 words	146 words	137 words	183 words

ChatGPT interviewing me about the Spanish Couple on the Titanic

Daniel Martin suggested on Facebook that with the right prompt ChatGPT could interveiw anyone using voice. From reading to speaking practice I adapted his prompt to make it easier for students to use it with any text they wanted.

Here is the text that I used for this experiment:
https://www.bulldogz.org/post/titanic-tales-a-single-spanish-victim

Here is the ChatGPT conversation, which is only a text chat:
https://chatgpt.com/share/67b0f234-9a28-800b-9000-c3f06260a3ff

And here is the recording I made of the interview:
https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/NjdhZmEyZDg1YWFjZGMzOTA2YjQ1ZWY1N3dLMk9scE11b2NY/o/VEMwMTk3MzQ5MDA2

You can watch a video about it here:

I would love to see a similar video made by a student.

Turboscribe versus Rev - the two best and most generous transcription tools

I asked NotebookLM to do the heavy lifting of comparing three transcripts saved from Turboscribe (x1) and Rev (x2)

This is an edited version of how it replied to my question:

“I am interested in any differences between the three transcripts particularly regarding the use of interjections and the use of phrases like 'like', 'you know', 'um' etc”

Differences appear in the transcripts regarding interjections and phrases such as "like," "you know," and "um." The transcript generated by TurboScribe.ai, includes these kinds of interjections and phrases more frequently compared to the two transcripts generated by Rev.com

For example, the TurboScribe transcript includes the parts in bold that are missing from the Rev transcripts:

·         "[M] Right. It's like we're on the edge of this revolution, you know, and how we learn and practise speaking. Like it's a total paradigm shift"

·         "[M] Exactly. And they went step by step, you know, first analyse the speech, then identify errors"

·         "[M] Exactly. So you got to clean up the transcript a bit. And then that's when the fun starts. Use ChatGPT to actually like analyse your speech and give you feedback"

·         "[M] They encourage teachers to, like, play with it, change it, adapt it, you know, and even share their own versions with other teachers"

These examples show the more conversational style captured by TurboScribe, including interjections ("wow") and fillers ("like", "you know"). The two transcripts captured by Rev appear to have had some of these conversational elements removed or edited out, presenting a cleaner version of the dialogue.

On the other hand, below is a comparison of how Rev.com with the verbatim option selected and Turboscribe, which has no such option, handles transcribing. It is very revealing:

Rev.com:

Rev heard ‘boat’ and ‘things’ and as it had been asked to create a verbatim transcript it didn’t examine how likely this sequence of words was.

Turboscribe.ai:

Turboscribe, on the other hand, correctly interpreted the learner’s intention because ‘bought’ and ‘thinks’ are more likely in the context. But this desire to predict what is more likely led it to also correct ‘womans’ to ‘women’, ‘say’ to ‘said’ and ‘are’ to ‘was’ and to insert ‘can’ into the phrase ‘you can guess’

Both Turboscribe and Rev interpreted what I heard as ‘ask her’ as ‘asked her’, but I imagine that is because the /t/ is hard to produce and often omitted by native speakers. Why ‘that’ was omitted by Turboscribe in the phrase ‘said no’ must also be down to frequency. About 161,000,000 results without ‘that’ v. About 26,900,000 results with ‘that’ according to Bing. 

There are other important differences between free accounts using Turboscribe.ai and Rev.com:

The most important advantage of Turboscribe is that it can be used from the age of 13 with parents’ permission. The other factor to bear in mind is that Rev.com only works in English on a free account at the moment. The transcripts are automatically synchronised while listening on Rev.com, whereas with Turboscribe.ai the user needs to move the page up to follow them.

But the key reason for not being able to recommend Rev.com on a mobile device is that it is: 

No longer possible to edit or download transcripts using a mobile device

When using a PC, this is not a problem.

Support on Rev.com is excellent and I haven’t needed to contact support on Turboscribe.ai

Your students can get feedback every time they speak

 Voice Recorder

But which one? I’ve got two apps installed with the same name and nearly identical icons. I’ve now discovered that it was installed from the start as it, like my mobile, is from Samsung.

I wanted to record myself giving a talk at a conference and I know that with my free accounts at Turboscribe.ai and Rev.com the limit is 30 minutes, so I tried rehearsing my talk using this ‘Voice Recorder’. It recorded my rehearsal successfully and when asked produced a transcript of a kind, but with nothing like the accuracy of the two other apps mentioned above.

I uploaded the combined voice and text file to ChatGPT and said, “Can you make a better transcription?”

I then listened to the resulting version, which was much better, although it still included one or two points that were not exactly the same as what I had said. I asked ChatGPT to correct these mistakes.

I then made a screen recording on my Android phone of it being read aloud by ‘Vale’

The second things I did was to upload the same voice and text file to NotebookLM. It produced a very flattering account of what I had said rehearsing for my talk at the #APACELT25 conference. It was fairly accurate in its discussion of my ideas and added some additional ideas of its own. 

This is a summary it:

AI-Powered Speech Feedback for Language Learners

1 source

This presentation outlines a workshop using Turboscribe.ai for speech-to-text transcription and ChatGPT for language analysis to provide students with instant feedback on their spoken English. The process involves recording a story, transcribing it using Turboscribe, identifying and correcting errors, and then using a five-step ChatGPT prompt to generate improved transcripts at different language levels. A sample student recording and its analysis are demonstrated, showcasing how the tools enhance language learning. Finally, the presenter shares resources and methods for incorporating these technologies into language teaching.

It is about fifteen minutes long and I have downloaded the audio file and uploaded it to Turboscribe.ai as it transcribes all the 'like' and 'you know' fillers. 

Here is the whole podcast with a transcript on Turboscribe.ai :

I had planned to record myself giving the talk live at APAC 2025, but for one reason or another I simply forgot to clip on the wireless microphone connected to my mobile. I’ll be giving an improved version of this talk at TESOL Spain in Burgos and, I hope improved again, at IATEFL in Edinburgh. Maybe I’ll get around to recording it live!