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.
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